Growing baseball from the ground up
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.