The Chinese Professional Baseball League (CPBL; Chinese: 中華職業棒球大聯盟; pinyin: Zhōnghuá Zhíyè Bàngqiú Dàliánméng) is the top-tier professional baseball league in Taiwan. The league was established in 1989 and played the first season in 1990.[1] CPBL eventually absorbed the competing Taiwan Major League in 2003. As of the 2024 season, the CPBL consists of six organizations, all of which have teams in the main league and farm league.
The CPBL consists of Major (Chinese: 一軍; lit. 'first/primary corps') and, since 2006, Minor (Chinese: 二軍; lit. 'second/reserve corps') leagues, with the Minor league team rosters consist of developmental and injury-recovering players.
CPBL TV is CPBL's official paid live-streaming and video-on-demand platform. It receives signals from each team's broadcasting partners and is available worldwide.
History
Baseball was first introduced to Taiwan during Japanese rule, and gained popularity when the national little league baseball teams won numerous Little League World Series championships in the 1970s and 1980s. The national baseball team also performed exceptionally well in many international competitions.[2] However, the development of baseball in Taiwan was limited due to the lack of a professional league, and therefore many players were reluctant to commit to the sport.
The idea of forming a professional baseball league in Taiwan was first suggested by local Brother Hotel's chairman Hung Teng-sheng (洪騰勝).[2] He formed his amateur Brother Hotel baseball team in 1984, and intended to professionalize his team and form a professional league within a few years. Throughout 1988 and 1989, Hung visited numerous Taiwanese businesses, trying to convince them to form professional baseball clubs. Most of his requests were rejected, but Wei Chuan Corporation, Mercuries Chain Stores, and Uni-President Corporation all supported the idea and formed teams. The Chinese Professional Baseball League was established on October 23, 1989, with Hung Teng-sheng acting as secretary-general. Because of his contribution to professional baseball in Taiwan, Hung is sometimes referred to as the "Father of the CPBL."[2] Chung Meng-shun (鍾孟舜) designed every original logo of the four founding teams.[3]
Expansions in the 1990s
With the popularity rise in the first few years, the Jungo Bears and China Times Eagles joined in 1993. The Koos Group Whales joined in 1997.
The league consisted of seven teams in the 1997 season which is the maximum in CPBL history.
Game-fixing scandals and decline in popularity
The Black Eagles Incident in 1997 resulted in a major popularity decline. The China Times Eagles became defunct after the 1997 season. The Wei Chuan Dragons and Mercuries Tigers also became defunct after the 1999 season, prior to which the Dragons had won all championships from 1997 to 1999.
In 1997, the newly founded Taiwan Major League began to compete with the CPBL. The two leagues were often competing with each other, but eventually, the TML merged with the CPBL.
Recent expansions
In May 2019, Commissioner John Wu announced that CPBL had reached agreement with Ting Hsin International Group to join the league by reactivating a former team, the Wei Chuan Dragons. The Dragons participated in the minor league in 2020, and returned to the major league in 2021.[4]
After Tsai Chi-chang became commissioner in 2021, he proposed that Kaohsiung serve as the location for a new team since it was the only major city in Taiwan without a CPBL team at the time.[5] In February 2022, Tsai announced that the sixth team would either be formed by Chunghwa Telecom or Taiwan Steel Group. It was later announced that the expansion team would be by Taiwan Steel Group. The proposed team name is TSG Hawks, and their home field would be Chengcing Lake Stadium in Kaohsiung.[6]
On 1 April, the CPBL announced that the season would begin from 11 April as the Rakuten Monkeys hosted the Chinatrust Brothers with the games being playing without live fans.[8] This received international coverage because other major baseball leagues such as the MLB in North America, the NPB in Japan, and the KBO in South Korea, which were still severely impacted by the virus outbreak were unable to confirm the dates of their respective season openings.[9] The annual CPBL All-Star Game was cancelled for the first time to accommodate to the compact schedule.[10]
The name "Chinese Professional Baseball League" has attracted debate among Taiwanese baseball fans. Owing to the ambiguous political status of Taiwan and the Nagoya Resolution, the Republic of China (Taiwan) was forced to use the name of "Chinese Taipei" under pressure from the People's Republic of China. Many have called to for the name of CPBL be changed, with suggestions including the replacement of “Chinese” with “Taiwan”, “Formosa” or “Chunghwa”.[11][12]
In the 2018 Taiwanese referendum, CPBL officials publicly rejected the proposal for Taiwan to compete as "Taiwan" in the 2020 Summer Olympics, for fear that Taiwanese athletes may risk losing eligibility. The league received criticism for holding this stance while selling official merchandise that said "Team Taiwan."[13]
In April 2020, Premier Su Tseng-chang said that in order to elevate Taiwan's visibility in the world, there was a need to distinguish Taiwan from China in the naming of China Airlines and CPBL.[14] A New Power Party survey showed that 62% of Taiwanese people support changing the name of the league to distinguish itself from Chinese baseball and avoid confusion.[15]
In January 2021, CPBL commissioner Tsai Chi-chang agreed that spectators should be made aware that the league was being played in Taiwan and not China, but that a name change was not a top priority.[16]
Organizations
All teams are owned by and named after large Taiwanese corporations, a similar practice seen in Japan's NPB and South Korea's KBO. Each team manages a regional market with a home city, but does not play its games exclusively in that market. Other than the home cities, regular season games are also held in Hsinchu, Douliu, Chiayi, Pingtung, Luodong, Hualien, and Taitung with less frequency.
Each season spans from March to October, with a one-week all-star break in June or July, which separates the season into first and second half-seasons. Playoffs are held in late October or early November, with three teams competing in two rounds. A team may qualify for playoffs either by winning a half-season title, or be awarded a wild card berth by attaining the highest place in the seasonal ranks. If a team wins a half-season title, it will not be considered in the seasonal ranks when the winner of the wild card is being decided. If both half seasons were won by the same team, another wild card berth will be given through the same mechanism after the first berth has been awarded
A typical monthly salary for a foreign player is in between 25,000 and 50,000 USD, these positions are normally filled by AA, AAA, or Japanese minor leaguers. The number of foreign players allowed on a team's roster is limited to four. Of the four players only three are allowed to be activated on the major league roster, the remaining foreign player can practice and prepare with the team or play in the minors. A foreign player, once sent to the minor league team, must wait a week before being allowed to be recalled to the major league.
Foreign players, from regions other than Japan and South Korea, are given Chinese epithets to increase familiarity with Taiwanese fans. These epithets, usually two to three characters in length, are generally loose transliterations of the players' names and are generally chosen as terms meant to convey strength or might. One example is Jeff Andra, whose epithet is Feiyong (飛勇) — meaning, literally, a flying brave man. Recently however, most foreign players are just simply given a direct Chinese transcription. Some players (mostly foreign players) have now adopted the custom in the rest of the world by placing their surnames on the back of their jerseys using the Latin alphabet. Some teams now have adopted Latin alphabet jerseys, a trend that has picked up in recent years. The Fubon Guardians only have uniforms with such, and the other teams are adopting such jerseys on occasion.
The CPBL Minor League took shape in late 2003 as a result of cooperation with Chinese Taipei Baseball Association. Alternative service draftees, players deemed eligible to complete their national service obligation in the field of baseball, were sent to the CPBL member organizations to fill their roster. There are currently 6 minor league teams, each plays about 80 games annually. Similar to the NPB's minor leagues, the minor league teams are each owned by CPBL member clubs as reserve teams rather than independent organizations.
The Taiwan Series was not held in 1992, 1994 and 1995 because the Brother Elephants and the Uni-President Lions had won the titles by virtue of winning both half-seasons.
^Liu, Yu-chiu (2020-04-14). "華航、中職正名？蘇貞昌：要讓世界看到台灣不是中國". Radio Taiwan International (in Chinese (Taiwan)). Archived from the original on 2020-11-28. Retrieved 2020-04-14.
^Hsieh, Chun-lin (11 May 2020). "把Taiwan變大沒那麼難 時力籲中職回應正名訴求". Liberty Times (in Chinese (Taiwan)). Retrieved 28 December 2023.
