Taiwan baseball set for new start after game-fixing scandal

Taipei - Taiwan's professional baseball league plans to make a new start in 2009 following a game-fixing scandal, the league said on Monday. At a team managers' meeting, the Chinese Professional Baseball League (CPBL) reiterated its resolve to crack down on game fixing. The CPBL now has four teams after the T-Rex team was dissolved in October over game-fixing and the Whales were disbanded in early November due to a lack of funds. The CPBL urged the remaining four teams to prepare for the selection of players before the start of the baseball season on March 28, 2009. During the 2009 baseball season, the four teams are expected to play a total of 240 games, down from 300 games in 2008, due to the loss of the two teams, CPBL said on its website. At the meeting, the CPBL also announced that starting next year, Taiwan baseball teams will travel to play exhibition games with Chinese teams, with the aim of playing regular games in China in future. Taiwan's Uni Lions and Elephants teams plan to go to Shanghai to play three exhibition games in March 2009, with Uni Lions and Elephants playing the Shanghai Golden Eagles once and then playing one game between themselves, according to the United Daily News (UDN). Professional baseball has been developing fast in China, and China humiliated Taiwan 8-7 at the Beijing Olympics. Baseball has been Taiwan's national sport since the 1895-1945 Japanese colonization of Taiwan, but it was not introduced to China until 2002. China founded the China Baseball League in 2002 with six teams whose players are trained by Taiwanese and Japanese coaches. The maturing of China's professional baseball poses a challenge to Taiwan which is among Asia's three baseball nations along with Japan and South Korea. Tseng Kuo-cheng, a Taiwan baseball commentator, said that sending teams to play in China can bring some life into Taiwan's baseball following the game-fixing scandal and the disbanding of the two teams. 'But as baseball is not popular in China, I wonder if there will be many audience watching the Taiwan-China games in mainland China,' he said by phone.