Taipei city to establish professional baseball team

Nice to see something positive on Taiwanese baseball, but I have a question: Who will this new team play? Will they be in the CPBL? There's nothing in the story that indicates what happens after they're formed.

Excellent questions. It's good to see people who don't just read the news, but apply critical thinking to what's printed. I'd like to see more of that.

My impression was that Taipei City wanted to take on the task of joining the CPBL with a team of their own. However, it is never stated as such. I wish that I could read Taiwanese (beyond stats) to learn more of what's being talked about in the local press.

Plans like this seem to be getting heavily criticized. People don't appear to want to support professional baseball through taxes. Although I can see the positive aspect of the Taipei plan which would be that the team would belong to the city. If they can turn a profit, I would certainly hope that the city is repaid. (On the negative side, experience suggests that the team will operate at a loss and a few preferred politicians and businesses will be the only ones to profit.)

I found the idea of training centers spread out through Taiwan to be interesting. These appear to be educational facilities meant for training and to advance sports medicine. They're not just for building tomorrow's ball players, but the entire staff to support them. At least, that's how I read it.

Setting up institutes may not be as glorious as founding one's own professional team. But I believe that it's a better use of tax payer money to educate, rather than to entertain, one's constituents.

The Taipei city team will play in the amateur baseball league, competing against teams such as Taiwan Power and Taiwan Cooperative Bank. These teams also compete against the farm teams of the Bulls, Elephants, Lions, and Bears.

Okay, so if the new Taipei team is going to play in an amateur league, wouldn't that by definition make them an amateur team? Everything seems vague regarding the hows and whys of this venture, except that it'll be at least partly subsidized by the government.

I'd love to see pro baseball prosper in Taiwan, but think perhaps the more proper role for governments there would be to very strongly encourage tighter control of the CPBL by the people who are supposed to be running it. How can the Taiwanese public trust the product the CPBL is putting on the field if they don't know whether the players are giving an honest effort?

As the dMedia T-Rex and Chinatrust Whales proved last year, a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. Adding a team only addresses the symptom, not the cause.