Hardball Hatchery

This August, for the first time ever, Zhong­ping Primary School in Tao­yuan County won the right to represent the Asia–Pacific region in the Little League Baseball (LLB) World Series. These little giants, who come from the mainly Hakka community of ­Zhongli, may be small in stature, but they proved extraordinarily resilient. They came from behind in a number of contests to overcome their rivals, and their toughness and never-say-die spirit were impressive. During the World Series game against Puerto Rico, Zhong­ping at one point trailed 3–0, but hung in to come back and win 6–4.

Though Zhong­ping fell in another game against Panama and lost their chance to advance, their desire to become world champions has been realized by their elders from the same county: Hsin-Ming Junior High School, who represented Taiwan in this year’s LLB Senior League World Series, went undefeated to finish first. An elite team which also produced Olympic silver medalist pitcher Kuo Lee ­Chien-fu, Hsin-Ming obliterated the squad from the US West region by a score of 11–2, easily coming away with the crown.

This is the second time Taiwan has won the world championship in this division, following the successful trip to the LLB Senior League World Series in 2010.

It takes years of rigorous training to become an internationally competitive baseball player. The photos shows players from the Hsin-Ming Junior High School LLB Senior League team doing pushups and lifting weights and players from the Zhongping Primary School Little League team braving an intense sun to run laps.

You can’t swing a cat in Taoyuan without hitting an elite baseball team. Others include Gui­shan Primary, which won the Asia–Pacific LLB World Series titles in 2009 and 2012, Ping­zhen High, which won the PONY “Palomino” League World Series (ages 17–19) in 2012, and the Chinese Tai­pei team, composed of players from several elite baseball elementary schools (including Gui­shan, Zhong­ping, Da­yong, and Ren­shan), which in 2011 won the PONY “Pony” League title (ages 13–14), bringing that trophy back to Taiwan for the first time in more than a decade.

At all three levels of youth baseball—Little League (11–13), Senior League (14–16), and Big League (16–18)—Taoyuan County is now known as the “production belt for national-team players.” But few people know that not many years ago, this place was a “baseball desert” and you could count the number of serious players on the fingers of one hand.

Liao Cai­neng, head of the Baseball Committee of the Tao­yuan County Sports Federation, points out that in the 1970s, when the whole country went crazy over Little League, baseball flourished for a brief time in Tao­yuan. But as college became a realistic possibility for more and more young people, pressures to perform on university exams escalated, and by 1989 there were only a paltry five LLB teams in the whole county.

Little League is the foundation of all later baseball programs. Without LLB to start training and screening talent from a young age, a country is unlikely to produce any world-beating adult competitors. In the 1990s, aiming to encourage schools at all levels to develop baseball, the Ministry of Education began to organize student baseball tournaments. Any school that founded a team and competed in games could get a subsidy.

Taoyuan County, now a bastion of baseball in Taiwan, has created a comprehensive system of training and career planning to help more children realize their diamond dreams.

After many years in the doldrums, Tao­yuan County grabbed the opportunity offered and, with the Baseball Committee taking the guiding role, started trying to assist primary schools in the county with founding baseball teams.

At first, many school principals refused. They didn’t want students to have any distractions from classwork, and so came up with excuses like “fly balls will break windows and create a safety problem.” To deal with that particular objection, Liao Cai­neng and others went to golf driving ranges to find discarded protective nets, which they then erected around school sports grounds. Principals also pleaded lack of resources, so Liao got the two professional baseball teams then based in Tao­yuan (now both disbanded) to give them old practice equipment.

Because some schools were not familiar with baseball rules, the Baseball Committee started them off with “just-for-fun baseball.” Liao explains that “just-for-fun baseball” is a modified form of baseball designed to minimize injury and maximize action. The bats and balls are made of sponge rubber and the ball is simply placed on a “tee” at home plate so the batter can easily hit it and keep the action moving. (The “pitcher” does not pitch, but is only there for defense.) Once the kids’ interest is piqued, they are ready to move on to more challenging softball and hardball, from whence formal school clubs and teams can be organized.

Tao­yuan County, located just adjacent to the Greater Tai­­pei conurbation, has lower housing prices than urban Tai­pei yet more jobs than in rural areas, so it has long been a popular place for indigenous people who have migrated to start new lives in the city. Aboriginal children, like country boys everywhere, tend to play more outdoors, get more sports experience, and be in better shape. Also, coming from lower-quality rural school systems, many focus on sports as a way to excel and find self-confidence in the academically more competitive urban schools.

“For many of these kids, it’s their dream to play pro baseball, and sports may turn out to be a viable career path, so we should give them the best possible chance to succeed,” says Liao.

It takes years of rigorous training to become an internationally competitive baseball player. The photos shows players from the Hsin-Ming Junior High School LLB Senior League team doing pushups and lifting weights and players from the Zhongping Primary School Little League team braving an intense sun to run laps.

Once teams were formed, the next big problem was to find qualified coaches. Most gym teachers in primary schools have only a superficial understanding of baseball, and can’t really provide serious instruction.

The sports model in Tao­yuan County is that the county government puts up the money to commission the Baseball Committee to recruit certified physical education teachers who have also had comprehensive and specialized training in baseball coaching, and then to assign these to the designated key schools for baseball in the county. Salary and benefits are similar to those of middle and primary school teachers, so they are able to retain talented people. Tao­yuan currently employs nine full-time coaches and plans to hire another three in the near future.

For other schools without qualified coaches, the Baseball Committee assists in looking for graduates of sports universities or retired players to help out; the school only needs to pay them by the hour.

Liao says that once the most thorny issues of safety, resources and coaches are sorted out, schools are quite happy to form teams. As baseball flourishes, success in competitions naturally follows.

It takes years of rigorous training to become an internationally competitive baseball player. The photos shows players from the Hsin-Ming Junior High School LLB Senior League team doing pushups and lifting weights and players from the Zhongping Primary School Little League team braving an intense sun to run laps.

With Little League booming, there are plenty of players to continue on to Senior League and Big League baseball.

Hsin-Ming Junior High School, which captured this year’s LLB Senior League world championship, is the most representative Senior League team in Tao­yuan County. Their current successes are due in large part to the work put in by ­Zhang Cang­bin, a retired director of student affairs at the school, winner of the Tao­yuan County award for outstanding contributions to education, and nicknamed “the god­father of Tao­yuan baseball.”

The Hsin-Ming team was first formed back in 1977, but because they had no fixed supply of players, the team operated only sporadically.

In 1999, ­Zhang, then director of student affairs at the school, decided that before he retired he would revive Hsin-Ming’s baseball fortunes. He recruited a group of stellar players with previous Little League experience, and re-formed the team. ­Zhang, who in his youth had been a pitcher for the Tai­pei College of Physical Education, served as the head coach.

­Zhang proved to be a strict coach, refusing to let his players slack off. But he also really cared about these kids, most of whom came from disadvantaged families. He not only dug into his own pocket to cover their food and clothes, he also convinced the school to transform the principal’s housing into a dorm for the baseball team, making it much easier for the children to get to school and practice.

After a few years, the once unsung Hsin-Ming Junior High baseball squad became repeat champions of Senior League competitions across the country. Even more impressively, in 2011 and 2013 the school represented Taiwan in the LLB Senior League World Series.

In order that the players of Hsin-Ming would be able to continue with baseball after graduating, ­Zhang, after retiring in 2003, also helped neighboring Ping­zhen High School to organize a team.

(from left) Peng Mingyu, Lin Zhengxian, and Song Wenhua, members of the team representing Taiwan at the 2013 IBAF AAA (18U) Baseball World Cup, all came out of the elite baseball system whose pathway runs through Hsin-Ming Junior High School and Pingzhen High School.

As the enthusiasm has spread from one level of youth baseball to the next, a comprehensive baseball system has taken shape. Currently Tao­yuan has 80 Little League teams, 12 LLB Senior League teams, and 18 LLB Big League teams, the largest total number of teams of any city or county in the country.

Tao­yuan has gone a step further, dividing the county up into geographic areas and nurturing elite teams within a given area. For example, the city of ­Zhongli has an integrated system incorporating Zhong­ping Primary School, Hsin-Ming Junior High School, and Ping­zhen High School. Students who want to focus on developing their baseball skills can go right up through school grades within a single school district.

At the university level, three institutions located in Tao­yuan—National Taiwan Sport University, Va­nung University, and Kai­nan University—have founded baseball teams, so that players can continue to deepen their skills. After graduation, players can go into professional baseball, become coaches, or join the local municipally sponsored Tao­yuan Airport City baseball team. There is no need for youth players to fret about future employment.

The idea of developing athletes who can compete at an international level is not a fantasy or delusion. The glorious success of Tao­yuan baseball, which has been built on years of hard work, is the best evidence.