Taipei - Taiwan's baseball team apologized to Taiwan fans
Saturday after humiliating defeats by South Korea and China in the
first round of the second World Baseball Classic.
Taiwan lost 9-0 to South Korea on Friday and 4-1 to China on
Saturday, missing the chance to advance to the second round of the
16-nation tournament.
The Taiwan team will return home Sunday, becoming the first team
to be eliminated from the World Classic.
The loss is double humiliation for Taiwan because this is the
second time China - which began to train baseball players only a few
years ago - has defeated Taiwan. China beat Taiwan 8-7 at the 2008
Beijing Olympics.
At a news conference at the Tokyo Dome, Yeh Chih-hsien, the
head coach for the Taiwan team, said Taiwan lost because the players
were under extreme stress and Chinese players have improved a lot.
'If we say that China beat Taiwan probably due to luck at the
Beijing Olympics, this time we can see they are better than us. They
made careful preparations to face Taiwan. We have to do
self-examination,' he said.
Starting pitcher Lin Yueh-ping also apologized to Taiwan fans at
the news conference broadcast in Taiwan.
'Our fans had high hopes for us to win, but we let them down,
and we certainly will face lots of criticism when we return to
Taiwan,' he said with tears in his eyes.
Taiwan TV channels showed that many Taiwan fans at the Tokyo Dome
cried after Taiwan's defeat to China, some saying the Taiwan team
should never go abroad again to avoid losing face.
As in Japan and South Korea, baseball is the national sport in
Taiwan.
But in recent years, Taiwan has done poorly in international
baseball tournaments due to lack of funds, top players' joining US
and Japanese teams and game-fixing scandals.
The other teams in Group A of the World Classic, Japan and South
Korea, play Saturday evening with the winning team advancing to the
second round - for the top eight - to be played in the United States.
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