http://taiwanjournal.nat.gov.tw/ct.asp?CtNode=122&xItem=23699

Fixing Taiwan baseball

Publication Date：01/12/2007 Section：Issues
By Lisa Liang

Talented players from Taiwan have gone on to successful careers abroad. Back
home, the industry stagnates, hindered by scandals and lack of representation
for players. Taiwan Journal staff writer Lisa Liang takes a swing at
unraveling the issue.

The entire game was at stake. Chinese Taipei was down one run with two men on
base at the bottom of the ninth inning. Suddenly, Lin Chih-sheng (林智盛), who
was hitless in his previous four at-bats, sliced a groundball past shortstop
into left field off Japanese pitcher Takasaki Kentaro, bringing home the tying
and winning runs. The Taiwanese contingent in the crowd went wild as their
national team defeated Japan 8-7, leading Taiwan to a gold medal in baseball
at the Asian Games for the first time.

The thrilling last-minute victory at the 15th Asian Games in Doha, Qatar,
Dec. 7 added yet another accolade to a highly successful baseball season.
Chinese Taipei, Taiwan's team in the Intercontinental Cup held in Taichung
Nov. 9-20, also defeated their Japanese rivals to finish behind the Cuban and
Netherlands' national teams for the bronze medal. That match-up mirrored the
Konami Cup finals held Nov. 10-13, where Taiwan's La New Bears faced off
against Japan's Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters in the Asia Cup Championship, a
tournament in which the Taiwanese side ultimately settled for second place.

Meanwhile, one of the most promising pitchers in U.S. Major League Baseball
is a Taiwan native. With a stone cold glare peering out from beneath a
Yankees baseball cap, Wang Chien-ming's (王建民) face can be seen plastered
across buses, buildings, on television, in magazines, newspapers and MRT
stations throughout the country. Dubbed a 21st century hero of the Taiwanese
people, the New York Yankees' pitcher earned 19 wins in only his sophomore
season on the Yankees' roster, tying with Johan Santana of the Minnesota
Twins--the 2006 Cy Young Award recipient--for the best overall record in the
American League.

At a time when Taiwanese baseball would seem to be flourishing, however,
local game attendance has dropped 30 percent in the last year.

"This season, average attendance was 2,264 per game," said Richard Wang,
director of International Affairs for the Chinese Professional Baseball
League. That represented a tremendous decline from the previous season, in
which attendance averaged 3,418. According to Wang, average per-game
attendance had not fallen below 3,000 since 2003.

One reason that local attendance has dropped may be the same reason that
baseball is once again popular in Taiwan: Wang Chien-ming. "The intensity of
Major League Baseball games is higher than ours, so some of our viewers will
be drawn to these games," Richard Wang explained. Instead of filling the
10,000 seats of any given baseball stadium on the island, people are now
sitting at home in front of their TVs, tuning in to watch the Yankees.

Wang also said that the Yankees' star was not entirely to blame for the
domestic league's recent slump: the multi-million dollar baseball game-fixing
scandal that emerged in July 2005--an incident involving alleged gangsters
and a number of CPBL teams--"made a lot of people lose faith in local
baseball," he noted.

Unfortunately, illicit gambling has been no stranger to the young Taiwanese
league. The CPBL, in just its 17th year, has suffered repeated allegations of
foul play involving gangs, corrupt politicians and crooked players over the
past decade.

The first major incident took place in 1996, when players from the Brother
Elephants were abducted and detained by gangsters in a Taichung hotel room,
then allegedly pistol-whipped and held at gunpoint, according to a Jan. 24,
2000 article in Time Asia. Similar incidents of outside interference were a
consistent problem for the CPBL in the following years.

Regardless of whether players were honest, declining game attendances showed
that fans remained skeptical, and executives and players alike are now
pleading for government intervention. "We need the government to help keep
the bad guys away," said Wang, "to provide a safe environment, not only for
players, but also for coaches and staff who work in this industry."

"In America and in Japan, the government has established measures to regulate
gambling," said Peng Chien-min (彭政閔), who plays right field for the Brother
Elephants and is one of their star players. "How come they don't do this in
Taiwan? It seems like the government hasn't put too much thought into it."

"People will watch only if they can gamble on it, it's just that simple,"
Peng continued, acknowledging that betting is an inevitable part of the
sports world. But players could still play while gamblers gambled if the
government took control and established official legalized gambling outlets,
instead of leaving it up to other people, he said. At present, the government
does not sanction betting on sports.

According to Yu Jun-wei (盂峻瑋), assistant professor in the Department of
Leisure, Recreation and Tourism Management at Shu-Te University in Kaohsiung,
a proper negotiating mechanism that ensures players are kept happy would
alleviate many of the CPBL's gambling problems. Presently, CPBL players live
at the mercy of their clubs, who reserve the right to let them go at any given
time. "Clubs can keep you forever," Yu explained, "unless you are released or
traded." Yu, who has authored two books about Taiwanese baseball, is working
on his first English-language book on the same subject, titled "Playing in
Isolation."

One possible solution would be to allow players to unionize. Forming a union
would "at the very least, give players some sort of security, something to
depend on," explained Peng.

Few players in the CPBL have it as good as the Brother Elephants' Peng
Brother Elephants' Peng

Few players in the CPBL have it as good as the Brother Elephants' Peng
Chien-min. According to Peng, his salary of approximately US$120,000 a year
is more than double that of any other player on the Elephants' squad. Most
players, Peng said, "think, 'I don't know how long I'll be playing, and if
there's a chance to make some money, why not?'"

Under the current system, players were given little incentive in the past not
to cheat. "Players were offered an amount of money that exceeded their
salary," Wang explained. "Some of them just wanted to make quick money,
because, as a baseball player, you really don't know how long you will be
here."

According to Lance Lan, director of the Department of Sports Excellence under
the National Council on Physical Fitness and Sports, "it's not gambling
that's the problem, it's the gangsters trying to influence the game by
illegal means." Currently, Lan explained, if players are caught influencing
games in an unethical manner, they will immediately be demoted to a lower
division team. He also mentioned that the NCPFS has discussed the possibility
of opening up the current policy by establishing a sports lottery in which
people can bet on the MLB. If successful, the council would then create a
similar system suited for the CPBL, he said.

Within the CPBL, Wang is working to develop a system of free agency, a
process that requires getting league executives and team owners to agree on
specific terms such as salary caps, lengths of contracts, and the number of
years before a player can become a free agent. Although negotiations have
already begun, the terms of the system remain undecided, he said.

Peng remarked that having a system where players could become free agents
would give the players a lot of freedom, but one obstacle Wang noted was that
players suitable for such a system are few. In order for the free agency
system to work, the league will also need athletes who are both successful
and motivated to entice competition among different teams. In Wang's view,
players of that caliber are rare in the CPBL; those talented enough, he said,
are lured by offers to go overseas.

"Our personnel have also mentioned the idea of a union," Wang said, before
explaining that forming a union would be a long process demanding a large
investment of time in negotiation, policymaking, winning the cooperation of
owners and managers, as well as educating players. For such a young league,
he noted, it is still an arduous task. "The union has to work with the
owners, instead of working against them, to raise money that will then raise
salaries," he said. "Then we can do something within our power to help
players have a better retirement."

Once players have the support of a union and free agency, they would begin to
feel like professionals, Wang argued, and once players are made to feel like
professionals, they would bring exciting games to the fans.

In the meantime, without a solid foundation where exploitation and extortion
can be eliminated, players like Peng feel that efforts to expand and develop
the CPBL will be in vain. "Unionizing and free agency, these are things that
should happen in sports," he remarked, "but it has to happen at the right
time," that is, when a healthy league without illegal gambling is in place.

The recent success of local teams and players who have traveled abroad
demonstrate the talent Taiwan has to offer the world of baseball.
Unfortunately, without cooperation from the government to bring discipline to
the league, there may soon be no one left watching Taiwan's major pastime.

"It's hard for someone to say they don't like baseball once they step into
the stadium," remarked Wang. The only problem is how to bring people back
into the stadiums now that they are gone.