Huang P'ing-yang's Baseball and Tea

Drinking tea helps me play better baseball. I used to be pretty hyper. I put a lot of pressure on myself, and I used to run around a lot. I started drinking tea to calm myself down so I could concentrate better on pitching and technique.

Everything's quiet when you drink tea. I don't like there to be more than four people or it's too noisy. Two people are best.

When I drink tea, I mostly talk about baseball. Lin Yi-tseng and T'u Chung-nan [fellow team members] are my tea buddies from way back. You could say that tea has brought out my pitching skills.

Like this Asian Cup, for example, tea really lent me a hand. It's always toughest for us the morning before a game, you know. We can't practice because we've got to conserve energy, we don't feel like messing around, and we can't catch zee's or it'll slow down our reactions. So what can you do? I take out my tea set and make tea. T'u Chung-nan and I talk about the game, we analyze the hitters' habits, and we learn more about our opponents.

People say things can help you and they can hurt you. Tea helps me now, but two or three years ago I was really hooked. I'd stay up all night with it. My teammates would be sleeping, and I'd be looking for someone to rap about tea with. Whenever I had time, I go around collecting tea sets. It affected my strength.

It's funny, but I'm like that in baseball, too--I tend to go overboard.

I was born in Kaohsiung, but we moved to Taipei later. I was a catcher in Little League. My high school coach thought I had the right build for a pitcher and started training me. I pitched for a year and started "showing promise," like the papers say.

When I was a freshman in college, I was picked for the Chinese-Taipei team--I was one of the youngest players ever, just nineteen. That was when our adult baseball teams were just getting back into international competition. I pitched in a game against Canada in the 27th World Cup at Seoul and was really lousy. They pulled me after two innings.

After that I was in several more international games and was always pretty bad. The papers said I was so afraid of giving up a hit or a walk that my face turned white on the field. But when I was back home playing for my college I always did real well. So people called me "the best pitcher in Taipei stadium."

The Harlem Cup in Holland last year was a turning point. I was playing for Kuanghwa then--that's our second team and everything went right. I won a best pitcher award and went back to the first team.

I really didn't think I would do as well as I did in the Asian Cup. Everybody says I've matured, but a lot of people have been helping me, like Lin Chia-hsiang, my coach. He's been with me many years and really understands me. Before the Asian Cup, he told me, "You've been getting over your hang up. Don't let it bug you again!" My hang up is that I worry too much about my performance on the field, hoping to get the attention of the scouts.

Just about every player dreams of playing in Japan, and I'm no exception. But I used to get so uptight my muscles would stiffen up and I couldn't pitch right. The psychological burden was too heavy.

Most of all it was a lack of confidence. Now I tell myself that baseball is part ability and part luck. I used to think that I had to step up on the mound and put down every hitter one by one, all by myself. But now I think differently. The game takes nine players. The guy on the mound may get more attention from the crowd, but he's not necessarily the most important.

For example, in the Asian Cup two years ago, we lost to Japan and South Korea by just one or two runs. This time we took the game against Japan by nine to three. Even now I'm still thinking how it's a good thing we got nine runs. If it had been like two years ago, we'd have had it.

[Picture Caption]

(left) Huang P'ing-yang's whole world has been nothing but baseball. (photo by Chiu Sheng-wang)

(right) After defeating Japan in this year's Asia Cup, Huang P'ing-yang and his catcher, T'u Chung-nan, share a special moment. (photo by Darcy Wu)

（right） After defeating Japan in this year's Asia Cup, Huang P'ing-yang and his catcher, T'u Chung-nan, share a special moment. （photo by Darcy Wu）