In early November this year, Sapporo, Japan, played host to baseball's Asian Cup championship. With the Cup tournament also serving as an Olympic qualifier, the traditional Asian powerhouses played at their best. Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea-where the game is played professionally-fielded their top professional squads, and the PRC-newly turned professional this year-fought through to secure a place in the final round. The mainland team even brought in an American coach, making their intentions to be a major player very clear.

In the four-team round-robin final series, the Japanese fielded a team entirely composed of professional players. Under coach Nagashima Shigeo, who is virtually synonymous with baseball in Japan, the team well and truly lived up to expectations, coming out as champions with an undefeated three wins from three games and only conceding one run. The ROC team, by contrast, was seen as the weakest of the big three, but thanks to the strategies of the coaching team, they beat the Koreans 5-4 to take second place in the tournament.

Experts in the baseball world are saying that after a 12-year slump, this victory could help Taiwan establish itself as a force to be reckoned with in world baseball. If the achievement of this year can be carried through to next year, the ROC national team could be one to watch.

Since winning silver in the 1992 Olympics in the Spanish city of Barcelona, the Taiwanese team, Chinese Taipei, has spent the past two Olympiads on the bench. Preparations to get the team back into the game were initiated some time ago; in addition to selecting the top amateur players for long-term training, retired former greats like Lu Ming-tzu were brought into the fold to help analyze the relative strengths and weaknesses of the team.

A further attempt to strengthen the team saw the Chinese Taipei Baseball Association enter into talks early on with the professional leagues in Japan and America. Their aim was to have Taiwanese players based in those countries released and able to don their home country's colors. Of these players, pitcher Tsao Chin-hui, currently pitching with a three-win, three-loss record and a recent addition to the American Major League (MLB), was naturally the top priority. However, as Tsao was still on the 25-man roster of his MLB team, the Colorado Rockies, at the end of the season in September, MLB regulations would not allow his release. Similar restrictions also applied to other players being sought after.

In baseball, pitching is 70% of the game. With Tsao unavailable, the coaching team's attention then turned to other overseas-based players like Chang Chih-chia and Wang Chien-min. As expected, these players turned out to be the backbone of the ROC team: the starting pitchers in the three games were Wang, Chang, and Hsu Ming-chieh, and it was these three who took the bulk of the pitching duties. Of the three, Chang's pitching proved indispensable in picking up victories against the mainland Chinese and Korean teams.

On the fielding side, the much-vaunted big guns of professional Taiwanese baseball were misfiring, and the defense depended almost entirely on Peng Chen-min and the US-based Chen Chin-feng. Furthermore, the infield, led by Huang Chung-yi, slipped up frequently. All this gave fans a distinct feeling of dread-and particularly so in the embarrassing demolition of the ROC team 9-0 by Japan, clearly illustrating the gulf between the two nations.

Judging by this year's tournament, Japan's place as the dominant force in Asian baseball is in no doubt, and if the Chinese Taipei team wants to be any competition in next year's Olympics, the team is in need of a serious overhaul.

Baseball experts are united in their opinion that whilst professional baseball provides the highest level of competition, ever since local players entered the professional realm more often than not their skills have stagnated, and they haven't lived up to the "professional" mantle. Additionally, despite being 37 years old, Huang Chung-yi is still the core of the team's infield, just as was the case two years ago with catcher Hung Yi-chung. These two "old boys" may have proven their positions as invaluable members of the team, but they have also made the need for young blood to be injected into the team abundantly clear.

But for all this, the team has achieved its main goal of a place in the Olympics, carrying on the rising fortunes of professional baseball in Taiwan. As well as the roughly 2000-strong crowd of Taiwanese baseball fans at the Sapporo Dome, the national team's games were watched eagerly on TV by the fans at home, and each day's result would be the lead story in all the major news media. The entire country was brought together in support of the team, and the emotions of a nation of baseball fans rode on the ROC team's performance. According to card-issuing banks around Taiwan, whenever the Taiwanese team took the field, the value of electronic transactions nationwide dropped by nearly 20%-a clear demonstration of Taiwan's devotion to its team.

Baseball has only been on the official roster of Olympic events since 1992, because the "non-measurable" nature of baseball-the fact that any given pitch alone can't be judged as a winner or loser-made it essentially different from other Olympic events. You could say that baseball is the ultimate game of patience. It's probably this patience that came into play so much in the final round: with the ROC team having little chance of toppling the Japanese in the evaluation of the coaching team, their hopes were pinned on the match against Korea. These two sides were pitched in heated battle right until the very end of the match, when amateur player Kao Chi-kang drove in the run that gave Taiwan the victory. Credit for this win, which was about as easy as choking down spicy kimchi, is most certainly due to the coaching staff, under the leadership of Hsu Sheng-ming, and their tactical play.

Also particularly worth noting is that after years of active promotion of the game, and with the official launch of the PRC's own professional league and the hiring of an American coach for their national team, the mainland lost to the ROC's A-side just 3-1. Quite obviously the disparity in skill between the two teams is shrinking. The weaknesses in the ROC team which were laid bare in the tournament urgently need to be addressed, says Lin Hua-wei, captain of the Chinese Taipei team that won bronze in the 2001 World Championship. If they remain unresolved, not only will they make any medal win a difficult prospect, but also the mainland team will most likely surpass Taiwan in a matter of years.

The attraction of baseball lies in the people involved, and in the essential elements of human nature it embodies. Whether it was a close win or a lucky break, it still gives us a reason to celebrate. After all, nothing beats the feeling of being a winner!