Contact Information:
Chairperson Robert K. Fitts  (New York)
Vice-Chair Jeffrey Wilson (Shanghai,China)
Taiwanese Baseball Coordinator
Departments



 
  • 1969 -Taiwan competes in the Little League World Series for the first time. The Taichung Golden Dragons create a swell of provincial pride and interest in baseball by winning the championship.
  • 1974 - San Francisco Giants sign Tan Shin-ming, a twenty-three-year-old Taiwanese pitcher, and invite him to spring training. He pitches that season for the Class-A Fresno [California] Giants, going 8-4 as the first Taiwanese to play professional ball in the United States.
  • 1975 -Bob Howsam, president of the soon-to-be world champion Cincinnati Reds, announces the signing of two former Little League standouts from Taiwan – pitcher Kao Eng-jey and catcher Lee Lai-hua. Both are denied exit permits by Taiwanese authorities because Taiwan law requires all able-bodied males to serve two years in the military.
  • 1990 - The Chinese Professional Baseball League begins play in Taiwan.
  • 1993 - The Los Angeles Dodgers visit Taiwan for a three-game friendship series.
  • 1995 - Taiwan’s Chinese Professional Baseball League expands its schedule from ninety games to 100 games.
  • 1997 - A dispute over television rights leads to the formation of a second professional baseball league in Taiwan, the Taiwan Major League.
  • 1997 - Three of Taiwan’s most-famous professional baseball stars, including two-time MVP pitcher Kuo Chin-hsing and a teammate, confess to charges they rigged games for gambling syndicates.
  • 1997 - Taiwan announces it is withdrawing from competition for the Little League World Series because it feels unable to comply with a rule limiting the number of players from each school district.
This timeline has been reproduced from Joseph Reaves' book Taking in a Game: A History of Baseball in Asia with the permission of the author.
About SABR: The Society for American Baseball Research was established in Cooperstown, New York in August of 1971. The Society's mission is to foster the study of baseball, to assist in developing and maintaining the history of the game, to facilitate the dissemination of baseball research, to stimulate interest in baseball, and to safeguard the proprietary interests of its members' research efforts.
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