By Allison Peng
It’s early in the morning. Everything is still asleep, and here I am in a seemingly endless line of people waiting excitedly for 10:00 a.m. Don’t get me wrong: this is not the lottery or a superstar’s concert. A few hours later, I got what I came for – a ticket to the opening game of the CPBL (Chinese Professional Baseball League) in its new season, which was to begin the following day. 10,500 tickets were sold out by 3:00 p.m. After the CPBL merged with the TML (Taiwan Major League), Taiwan baseball would never be the same. No one would deny the important position that baseball has among other sports in Taiwan. After being professionalized, it became rooted in everyone’s daily life and flourished everywhere. People were crazy about baseball. Baseball players became celebrities, idolized by teenagers. We even won a silver medal in the Olympics in 1992. However, baseball in Taiwan later stumbled. Scandals involving cheating and gambling cast a shadow on the credibility of the sport, disappointing many of its fans. Most of my favorite players were accused of cheating and they were expelled from the CPBL. The team had no choice but to break up. From then on I stopped watching baseball completely, as did many fans. Taiwan baseball was on the decline. But a turning point came in 2001, since the Baseball World Cup was held in Taiwan. The screams and yells for our team in the basement of my dorm could be heard on the fourth floor whenever there was a live game on TV. The nation’s passion for baseball revived and soared high than ever. We also won third place, surely bringing back many fans for the 2002 season. Furthermore, this year the CPBL and the TML decided to merge. Erasing past hostility between them, they sat down and talked, doing their best to improve the sport as much as possible. A brand new league was born, and fans chose to support it. It’s not that hard, actually, for us to believe in it again, because baseball is not just a sport but for many of us part of our daily life. We get nervous, excited, happy, and upset about a game, whether a team plays well or not, and this won’t die out easily. Now we’re ready to rock the stadium again on opening day. Will a new era of baseball begin? Just wait and see. a
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May 2024
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