Taiwan Baseball

[Brian McKenna]

Read a couple articles about organized crime and game-fixing in the relatively young Taiwanese pro baseball league. What is actually going on?

[runningshoes]

There were some pretty serious scandals going on a few years back, that make the Black Sox scandal look like a love-in. I watch the games everyday and from what I know there is nothing going on now, but I could be wrong.

Players were being threatened, not unlike Russian hockey players have been by the Russian mob in the past. I don't know too much about it other than it got quite ugly.

[Brian McKenna]

Weren't players arrested this year?

[VIBaseball]

I'm reviving this thread, but not for its original intent.
Thanks to Skilton's Baseball Links, I have found the website for the professional league in Taiwan:

http://www.cpbl.com.tw/

It looks like various teams have their sites too. But they're all in Chinese.
I'd like to know if anybody can direct me to English-language info, or translate something from these sites (I know we have some posters who follow the Taiwanese players).

I'd like to find out more in particular about Midre Cummings, most recently of the Orioles. I have found he's over there now.

[riverfrontier]

Don't know how I missed this thread, but anyway...Yeah, the gambling scandals have been bad. Whole teams were shut down. There have been two big ones so far, so in about 5 years we can probably expect another one. It's the main reason why I could basically care less about the league. There was a competing league, the TML (Taiwan Major League), which sprang up after the first gambling scandal, but it didn't last long. I go to a few games a year, but it's more or less for the atmosphere.
There have been quite a few cup-of-coffee major league guys come and go here. The best current major leaguer who has been here is probably Melvin Mora. Midre Cummings plays for the La New Bears, who also just signed Chin-feng Chen, who is sort of a local hero, being the first Taiwanese to play in a big league game.

[riverfrontier]

Here's an article written by a buddy of mine.
http://www.travelintelligence.net/wsd/articles/art_3328.html

[adi008]

nice topic budYYY!... ;)

[VIBaseball]

Riverfrontier, maybe you can help me out here. I heard Midre Cummings left Taiwan, things just didn't work out there. I couldn't find anything in the news, though, and I haven't found a Chinese reader to help me with the La New Bears website. If not stories, I'd at least like to get Midre's stats for the time he was there.