by Alan Lan
Eight years ago, professional base-ball first appeared in Taiwan. Five years later, basketball also turned pro. Com-pared to Major League Baseball in the U.S., 125 years old, and to the NBA, which just celebrated its 50th anniversary, professional sports in Taiwan is like a young immature rookie just starting to learn the game. And the rookie has com-mitted several terrible errors and turn-overs for all those years. Strike-outs and air-balls: 1. We don*t have enough quality local players. There are only 20 million people on this tiny island and we*ve got 2 baseball leagues and a total of 11 teams. As a result of this overloaded market, a local player with a .200 batting average would still be in the starting line-up. And that is considered ridiculous for professional baseball. Plus, some teams don*t even have one usable local pitcher. On the basketball floor, really good Taiwanese players are probably fewer than 10 while we have 6 professional basketball teams in the Chinese Basketball Alliance. Hung-Kuo Elephants have 5 of the best; then what about the rest of the teams? 2. Foreign players are taking over the game In both Taiwanese baseball leagues, it’s allowed to have 4 foreign players on the field at the same time. The best pitchers, batters, runners, defenders are almost all foreign. It turns out that every category is headed by foreign players. At the end of a season, the best 9 are mostly overseas players; golden glove winners are 80% foreigners; most valuable player is usually a foreigner* you name it. Local players only get to win relatively unimportant awards like rookie of the year, most improved player, stuff like that. The consequence is that the all-star players would probably leave for a country where he gets better contracts after a brilliant year in Taiwan. We demand high level games. But that doesn*t mean we need foreign players to play for a Taiwanese league to show the level of the game. In basketball, we can see black play-ers dominating the game. 7 footer sem-barrass native 6'6" centers with ease; explosive “aliens” dunk over skinny Tai-wanese players. And some call them ex-citing games. Local players are put at the end of the bench and foreign players play 40 minutes a game because what the teams ask for is to win and nothing but to win. They don*t really care if their local players receive an opportunity to improve themselves by playing on the court. 3. Homelessness Every pro sports team outside Tai-wan has a home city with a hometown crowd. The Milwaukee Brewers suck, but still most Milwaukee fans follow their home team. We just don’t have that in Taiwan. The teams with more star players get more support. Teams with no appealing superstars would have big problems sell-ing tickets In baseball, only 1 or 2 match-ups produce sell-out crowds. In basket-ball, only 1 team makes fans go out and buy tickets. The newly founded Taiwan Major League set up the first home-away system in Taiwan. And it has proved it’s going in the right direction. In just its first year, the total annual attendance of the TML has excelled that of the CPBL. 4. A bad system We don’t have the free agency system or the salary cap that U.S. pro sports has followed for decades. A player’s contract is considered permanent with his team. He doesn’t have the right to go elsewhere and sign for a bigger contract. You either stick it out or quit. That makes better teams retain their dominance over weaker teams. But it also makes the game lack variety. Having a salary cap is also im-portant. Then you wouldn’t have wealthy organizations signing superstars at will. And by means of a salary cap, if a fran-chise is over the cap, it has to release its players to keep the team under it. Game-winning shots: It seems to be the only way to save the slumping market by making all these shots to turn the game around. 1. A sound project for producing more young local talents. 2. Slower team expansion. 3. Reduction on using foreign players. 4. A home-away system. 5. A reasonable player transaction system.
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May 2024
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