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Category: Taiwan

  • Manny Ramírez Saved Taiwanese Baseball

    Manny Ramírez Saved Taiwanese Baseball

    The Hall of Fame candidate’s season in Taiwan resolved a national crisis, more or less

    by Jerry Chen

    2013 was a big year in baseball. It was the year the third iteration of the World Baseball Classic was held. It was the year the Houston Astros moved to the American League. It was also the year Manny Ramírez played half a season in Taiwan … and saved Taiwanese baseball.

    This year is Manny Ramírez’s 10th and final year on the Baseball Hall of Fame ballot. The general consensus is that he will not get enough votes to be inducted, even if he gets a final-year sympathy bump. He has the numbers to back up his legacy, and even though his performance-enhancing drug (PED) controversy will likely prevent him from getting enough votes, this is a story of how he (basically) saved Taiwanese baseball.

    Manny’s Hall of Fame case

    Manny’s career statistics are simply impressive. A few highlights from the Hall of Fame ballot: 12-time All-Star (1995, 1998-2008) and nine-time Silver Slugger Award winner (1995, 1999-2006) as outfielder… Won World Series MVP with Red Sox in 2004…Member of Red Sox’s 2004 and 2007 World Series Championship teams.

    According to Baseball Reference, from 1996 to 2006, Manny never produced wins above replacement (WAR) below 4.0 in any given season, and he contributed 7.3 WAR in 1999.1 He was an excellent slugger, leading the AL in slugging percentage and OPS in 1999, 2000, and 2004. He slashed .312/.411/.585 over his entire MLB career.

    Alas, Manny Ramírez failed two PED tests and was suspended twice, in 2009 and 2011. He retired from MLB the second time and never quite made it back even as he tried. If not for his PED-related suspensions, Ramírez would have undoubtedly been inducted into the Hall of Fame already. His statistics are unquestionably solid, and even his critics would agree he was one of the best right-handed hitters of all time. Former teammate and slugger David Ortiz was inducted in his first year of eligibility, and Manny put up significantly better numbers over his career.

    But, if not for the way his MLB career ended, he may not have gone to Taiwan and rejuvenated its national sport.

    Dark ages and a national crisis

    Taiwanese professional baseball experienced the second of its dark ages in the late-2000s,2 with four game-fixing scandals occurring within five years. The 2009 scandal involved many star Brother Elephants and Sinon Bulls players and dealt a major blow to an already embattled league. That year, the government convened a national affairs conference3 and set up a task force with the goal of reviving the national sport. Nevertheless, attendance was down almost 30% from its 2009 levels for each of the next three years and was poised to trend further downward.

    Out of this chaos and decline came a much needed restructuring: Sinon Corporation sold the Bulls to Kaohsiung-based conglomerate E-United Group, who renamed the team EDA Rhinos.4 The team under new ownership immediately pursued new initiatives, one of which was: acquiring Manny Ramírez.

    After retiring from MLB in 2011, Ramírez filed to be reinstated and ultimately served a negotiated-down 50-game suspension in the Oakland Athletics system. Once released by the A’s, he expressed interest in playing in Taiwan. The Rhinos were determined to make a deal happen and publicly confirmed their intention to sign him in February 2013. They reached an agreement with Ramírez in March and successfully acquired the most decorated foreign player in Taiwanese history.

    On March 11, 2013, Manny arrived in Taiwan. His first words upon arrival? “I love Kaohsiung.”

    Manny mania

    Kaohsiung loved Manny back. His arrival was met with extreme excitement. It was unprecedented for someone with all of his credentials aforementioned to join the Taiwanese league. And he delivered not just star power, but also dominance in the batter’s box. On April 4, Manny hit his first home run in Taiwan and then went on to hit seven more in the next three months. He slashed .352/.422/.555 with 21 extra base hits and 43 RBI in the 49 games that he played in Taiwan.

    Like a whirlwind, Manny’s visit was fast, impressive, and very short-lived. By the end of June, when he announced he would opt out of his contract, he was leading the league in batting average, home runs, and RBI. He already led the Rhinos to their first half-season title in the team’s inaugural year.

    By some estimates, Manny’s first week in Taiwan drove NT$13.7 million, or nearly half a million US dollars, in ticket and advance sales alone. In 2013, the league drew 1,459,072 total attendees, a 150% increase from the year prior and the largest audience in a decade.

    Where are they now?

    EDA Rhinos: The EDA Rhinos struggled without Manny in the second-half, placing last in that half, but they still secured a berth to the Taiwan Series given their first-half title and second place overall record. They lost the 2013 Taiwan Series to the Uni-President Lions. After four seasons and a championship in 2016, E-United Group sold the team to Fubon Financial for NT$300 million (toughly $10 million). As the Fubon Guardians, the team has struggled perennially and seen frequent manager turnover.

    Manny Ramírez: After leaving Taiwan, Manny spent a few years in the Texas Rangers and Chicago Cubs systems before signing with a Japanese independent league team and the Sydney Blue Sox of the Australian Baseball League. His seasons were cut short or canceled altogether due to COVID-19 and ongoing medical issues. He has been on the Hall of Fame ballot since 2017, reaching 34.3% of the vote last year.

    As for Taiwanese baseball? It got a much needed boost from Manny mania.5 Although it would not reach the same 1.5 million audience size achieved in 2013 until almost a decade later, the consistent 1.3-1.4 million annual attendance prior to the global pandemic stabilized the fanbase. In 2020, amidst the pandemic, Manny expressed interest in returning to Taiwan, at age 47. The CPBL did not need Manny’s star power to generate interest this time, and it became the first league in the world to return to action while the rest of the world suspended play.

    The league eventually added two expansion teams, the Wei Chuan Dragons in 2021 and the TSG Hawks in 2024. Attendance has reached all-time highs every year since 2023. Even though it has been over 12 years since Manny Ramírez played half a season for the EDA Rhinos, Taiwanese baseball will always have him to thank for reviving the sport all those years ago.

    And, for that, perhaps Manny deserves an honorable mention at Cooperstown.

    Covering the bases

    Taiwan Cooperative Bank defeated Taichung and won its seventh Popcorn League title. The Rakuten Monkeys have offered slugger Li Lin an eight-year NT$180 million ($5.7 million) contract extension. Athletics left-hander Wei-En Lin got a MLB Pipelineas a member of one of 2025’s most improved farm systems. The SoftBank Hawks announced they were supportive of new signee Jo-Hsi Hsu playing in the World Baseball Classic.

    1 Per FanGraphs’ calculations, he produced 4.0+ WAR from 1996 to 2003, with 7.5 in 1999.

    2 The first dark ages were in the late 1990s, when the country experienced its first game-fixing scandals involving the “Black Eagles” and a developing league schism.

    3 In Taiwan, a national affairs conference is a meeting of public officials, academics, subject matter experts, and/or private sector advisors; it is typically called in the event of political or economic crisis, akin to emergency advisory meetings or summits in the U.S.

    4 The team was named after E-United Group’s hospitality and entertainment arm, E-DA World.

    5 Team Taiwan’s participation in the 2013 World Baseball Classic, where it placed eighth in the world, also contributed to general interest and investment in the game that year. Veteran pitcher Chien-Ming Wang, whose early seasons with the New York Yankees electrified the country just a few years earlier, pitched for his national team for the first time since 2004.

    You can follow Jerry’s blog on Taiwanese baseball at:

    https://www.thetaipeisun.com

  • Is Taiwan Arming Youth Ballplayers with AI?

    Is Taiwan Arming Youth Ballplayers with AI?

    The story of a Little League champion turned tech czar offers insights

    by Jerry Chen

    Originally published on The Taipei Gun, December 17, 2025

    For a country widely known for its dominance in semiconductor manufacturing, Taiwan is actually quite behind in the integration of technology in baseball.1 So, no, while we are seeing “AI-powered” baseball camps and other innovations in the U.S., even if mostly gimmicky, the Taiwanese are not yet arming youth players with AI.

    The real news: Basegarden, a youth baseball foundation focused on rural Taiwan, partnered with tech company MetaAge to donate laptops to rural schools and present a seminar on AI. While not as provocative, this small step is arguably more significant in a culture where, historically, athletics and academics are separated at a young age.

    Let’s rewind 50 years. Youth baseball development was largely a nationalist initiative in the 1970s. Chiang Kai-shek’s authoritarian government, still fixated on “taking back the mainland” and decades away from democratizing, saw its diplomatic influence start to crumble. It needed a way to solidify its legitimacy and found this in what I will call the “youth baseball arbitrage.”2 It was a formulation to take advantage of the U.S.’s relaxed attitude toward training young players and its concurrent fascination and coverage of world competition in Little League Baseball.

    The nationalist impulse

    After sending a Taichung team that won the Little League World Series (LLWS) title in 1969 and receiving international coverage, the winning formula became simple in the 1970s:

    1. Field a team to play in the LLWS;
    2. Display dominance (i.e., win a lot);
    3. Receive American “international” coverage;
    4. Feel like a strong nation;3 and
    5. Repeat step 1.

    This was evidently a self-sustaining cycle and resulted in a win-at-all-cost mentality. At worst, it fostered unsavory tactics discussed in Andrew Morris’s Colonial Project, National Game.4 At best, the national obsession spurred specialization and generated a pipeline of young winners. Teams from Taiwan won 17 titles in a three-decade stretch starting in 1969, not to mention the wins at the Senior and Big League levels.

    Exactly how Taiwan or Chiang’s government was portrayed seemed secondary to the fact that there was any coverage at all. All press was good press at that point. Chiang’s government was expelled from the United Nations in 1971, and Taiwan remains unrepresented in many international organizations to this day.

    Nonetheless, the national baseball craze produced cohorts of top players like Yuen-Chih Kuo but also byproducts like the unlikely story of Cheng-Wen Wu.

    Yuen-Chih Kuo (left) with the LLWS trophy (Photo: Taiwan Cultural Memory Bank / Central Daily News)

    A tale of two champions

    Yuen-Chih Kuo, or Genji Kaku as he is known in Japan,5 was born in 1956 in Taitung, southeastern Taiwan. He was a pitching phenom who caught national attention in 1969, the year Taiwan held a national team identification tournament to organize a national superteam.

    Kuo excelled on the mound, reportedly throwing a 13-inning, 220-pitch(!) complete game at one point, and batted .350 in the tournament to earn a spot on the Taichung Golden Dragons. The Taiwanese all-star team won the Far East region and then powered past Canada, Ohio, and California to win the 1969 LLWS title. This was the first ever championship won by a team from Taiwan.

    Kuo’s baseball career took off a few years later. He signed with the Chunichi Dragons in 1981 and never looked back. His fastball reached 151 km/h (about 94 mph) in his NPB debut. Over his 16-year career in Japan, Kuo recorded 106 wins, 116 saves, a 3.22 ERA, and 1,415 strikeouts. He was inducted into the Taiwanese Baseball Hall of Fame in 2019.

    Many players that were part of the pipeline of champions, like Yuen-Chih Kuo, came from rural and indigenous communities. They devoted their schooling years almost exclusively to baseball. Most, unlike Kuo, would not reach his level of success, or anywhere close to it. For a Taiwanese athlete trained for professional baseball, Kuo achieved the traditionally ideal outcome.

    The Tainan Giants in 1971 (Photo: National Archives Administration)

    Cheng-Wen Wu, our second protagonist, was born in 1958 in Tainan, southern Taiwan. Like many of his classmates, he played baseball at school. In 1971, two years after Taichung’s historic win, Wu’s Tainan Giants entered the LLWS as the Far East regional champions and also dominated. A standout pitcher, Wu threw a shutout in the 11-0 win against Hawaii in the semifinals. In the championship game, Tainan defeated Gary, Indiana, led by future MLB player and manager Lloyd McClendon.

    The glorious win in Williamsport may have turned out to be the least remarkable feat in Wu’s life in the context of Taiwanese history. After all, it was replicated by eight other Taiwanese teams over the next decade.

    After his baseball career, which did not extend much further, Wu received degrees in electrical and computer engineering, first from the prestigious National Taiwan University (NTU) then from the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he earned his master’s and Ph.D. Following his extensive schooling, Wu joined the faculty of the National Tsing Hua University (NTHU) and eventually became vice president of NTHU. He was one of eight candidates running to become president of his alma mater NTU.

    In 2024, Cheng-Wen Wu became minister of the National Science and Technology Council, stewarding the research and development of some of the world’s most advanced technology. As Taiwan’s “tech czar,” Wu oversees the funding of academic research and the development of industrial complexes like the famed Hsinchu Science Park.

    Wu’s career path could not have differed more from Kuo’s. Even though his baseball career peaked early, his integration into the world outside of baseball is truly a blueprint for educating young players. Five decades after their shared experiences as Little League champions, they are linked once again in the modern age.

    Competing futures of youth baseball

    The thread that brings Kuo and Wu together is another ballplayer, former CTBC Brothers outfielder and Hualien native Szu-Chi Chou. Chou was born in a small town in Hualien called Guangfu, or Fata’an in Amis. He is a three-time recipient of a youth baseball scholarship established by Yuen-Chih Kuo.

    According to Chou, he was only able to afford a left-handed glove because of the scholarship. Chou’s professional baseball career spanned 20 years. He is a four-time Taiwan Series champion (all with the CTBC Brothers / Brother Elephants) and MVP in 2012.

    Inspired by Kuo’s philanthropy, Chou founded Basegarden in 2013 to support youth baseball players in rural Taiwan. However, unlike Kuo’s scholarship, Basegarden focuses on the players’ academic pursuits, often outside of baseball. It has partnered with TSMC to offer career resources and broaden professional opportunities, for example.

    So, a Kuo protege is now helping the next generation of baseball players build tech literacy and diversify their career paths. In essence, he is working to produce more Cheng-Wen Wus. The future is bright for Taiwanese youth baseball players who will all become well-rounded students and excel in other fields beyond their playing careers … right?

    Not exactly. For one thing, the nationalist impulse is still there. After Team Taiwan won the 2024 Premier12 title, EasyCard Corporation announced it would donate to the Taiwan Indigenous Baseball Development Association, with the explicit goal of producing future indigenous players that can bring home more golds.

    The Taiwanese want to see their country win. Players are viewed as tools to help achieve that goal, and indigenous communities have historically been the perfect toolboxes to draw from. That means continued specialization into sports for marginalized kids with little pathways to alternative careers—the opposite of what Basegarden is aiming to achieve. The irony is that when it comes to putting Taiwan back on the map, winning countless Little League titles seems pretty ineffective.

    Will there be another Yuen-Chih Kuo? Almost certainly.6 The more important question is: Will there be another Cheng-Wen Wu? A Little League champion turned tech czar (or industry titan or leading artist)? We shall see in a few years, or decades.

    Covering the bases

    The TSG Hawks have re-signed slugger Steven Moya to a one-year deal. Hawks right-handed pitcher Spenser Watkins announced his retirement. Baseball America projectsleft-hander Wei-En Lin to be the Athletics’ No. 4 starter in 2029. Former Chicago Cubs pitcher Jen-Ho Tseng, who was non-tendered by the Rakuten Monkeys, reportedly agreed to terms on a deal with the Wei Chuan Dragons.

    1 Statcast (using the PITCHf/x camera system, then the TrackMan radar system) was installed in all 30 MLB stadiums in 2015; as of 2025, two of the six CPBL teams do not yet use TrackMan, and one uses just a portable unit.

    2 With the majority of the country, some 85% of the population, having lived through Japanese rule and embraced what was known to them as a Japanese game, Chiang’s newcomer government, explicitly anti-Japanese, saw its usefulness and reluctantly accepted baseball.

    3 Whether this nation meant “Free China” (as in the grand project supported by Chiang’s regime who arrived just two decades prior) or “Taiwan” (as in the physical land with which most countrymen were inclined to identify), or some combination of the two national identities, was contentious and remains a debatable topic.

    4 I also discuss this in my article published in NINE: A Journal of Baseball History and Culture.

    5 Kuo’s name has also been translated as Yen-Tsu Kuo, as he was registered in the Little League system.

    6 National resources continue to be poured into player development. Plenty of professional players have performed at the highest level in Japan and beyond.

    For more on Taiwanese baseball, follow Jerry Chen’s site, The Taipei Sun

    https://www.thetaipeisun.com

  • Illusions of a National Game: The Myths That Built (and Broke) Taiwanese Baseball

    Illusions of a National Game: The Myths That Built (and Broke) Taiwanese Baseball

    by Jerry Chen

    On April 11, 2020, at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic and while the rest of the world put professional sports on hold, the CTBC Brothers played the Uni-President Lions at Taichung Intercontinental Baseball Stadium to start the world’s first professional baseball game of the year. Taiwan, long neglected—or isolated—by the international community, was finally gaining a global audience, not only for its successful COVID-19 response that led to this much-anticipated season-opening, but also for a national sport that had always craved international recognition.

    But this moment in the limelight did not actually elevate the profile of Taiwanese baseball or boost Taiwan’s “soft power” in global influence as reported. One problem was that Taiwan’s major league was confusingly named the Chinese Professional Baseball League (CPBL), and no casual fan was going to research the historical or linguistic context of why that is the case, or care that this league is different from the China Baseball League (CBL) across the Taiwan Strait. Some media outlets used the term “Chinese Baseball League” or “Chinese baseball,”undercutting Taiwanese baseball’s distinct identity.

    After popular podcaster Jared Carrabis erroneously reported, “We are playing baseball in China” in April 2020, he followed up with something perhaps worse: “Correction—it’s a Chinese baseball league in Taiwan. Whatever. It’s baseball. And it’s happening.” The name of the CPBL, now resembling a marketing blunder, has been a contentious topic for decades, involving domestic politics, ethnic identity, and even foreign affairs. However, the name is just a symptom of a much larger, perhaps generational problem. Taiwanese baseball is having an identity crisis, yet its fans seem to be entirely unaware or indifferent.

    As a national game, baseball has captivated Taiwanese fans and reflected a unique and collective self-image in Taiwan for almost a full century. This self-image, as with any other expressions or aspirations of consciousness, is full of complications, contradictions, and ultimately illusions. As baseball faces challenges around the world, any initiative to advance the sport requires an examination of its role in society. For the Taiwanese people, it means facing, coming to terms with, and addressing the harsh realities of their historical relationship with baseball.

    Existing scholarship offers an extensive historiography of baseball in Taiwan. In Playing in Isolation, Yu Junwei provides an assessment of a national game that is arguably hollowed out from within by inorganic incentives. Government policies that focused on maximizing propaganda instead of the long-term development of baseball buoyed amateur participation but led to the game’s decline. In Colonial Project, National Game, Andrew Morris offers a reading of baseball as a manifestation of Taiwanese social identity within the context of globalization. He discusses in depth the historical dynamics between Taiwanese baseball and governing forces like Japan, the Republic of China, the United States, and even capitalism. Finally, in Empire of Infields, John J. Harney makes the case that Taiwanese baseball epitomizes a nuanced history transcending simple narratives of assimilation or resistance. The history of Taiwan is complex, and the history of baseball in Taiwan is no exception.

    Fans around the world view and cherish baseball through the lens of nostalgia; Taiwanese fans specifically find a shared pride in old tales of international glory. Despite undoubtedly creating a collective identity, Taiwanese baseball has sometimes been marked by unsavory goals and means and often entangled with class and ethnic stratification. Investment in baseball development has primarily been made to serve the interests of empires, literal and otherwise. The legacy of those interests continues to hinder the modern game, and a clear-eyed attempt to reconsider baseball’s cultural role is needed for the game’s future in Taiwan.

    In this essay, two of Taiwanese baseball’s most prominent origin stories, the Kano and Hongye legends, are thoroughly examined. The historical incentives of creating or reinforcing myths surrounding these origins are weighed against the cultural costs of upholding them; their many complications or contradictions are laid out and contextualized. While any attempt to amend or remove these culturally pertinent legends will likely be futile, examining the manufactured significance that overlays them is an essential first step toward creating authentic baseball moments beyond historical or extrinsic interests. These cultural moments may just evolve into the beginnings of a new era of Taiwanese baseball.

    Continue to read the full article on Project Muse

    https://muse.jhu.edu/article/968562

  • How to Follow Asian Professional Baseball

    How to Follow Asian Professional Baseball

    by Zac Petrillo, Jerry Chen, and Rob Fitts

    So how can English speakers follow Asian baseball? There are now numerous ways to track professional baseball in Japan, Korea, and Taiwan even if you don’t read the native languages. Let’s look at each country in turn.

    Japanese Baseball (NPB)

    Just five years ago, it was difficult for English speakers outside of Japan to follow NPB, but now there are so many ways and sites to follow Japanese baseball that I can only list a small number here. Numerous sites post daily results, standings, and statistics on the web. Some sites that I find useful include the official website of Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB.jp), yakyucosmo.com, proeyekyuu.com, baseball reference.com, and flashscore.com. Japan-baseball.jp, the home page of Samurai Japan, contains schedules, rosters, scores, and information on all the national baseball teams. Those seeking more advance statistics may want to look atNPBstats.com and Delta Graphs which have incredible databases of traditional and sabermetric stats covering the entire history of Japanese professional baseball.The r/NPB group on Reddit is the most active social media site in English dedicated to NPB, with thirty-one thousand members in 2024. Members post game scores, standings, video highlights, and links to stories on other platforms. It is also a great place to ask questions about the game, learn how to buy tickets, find memorabilia, and read about other topics. One can also browse Japanese-language sport sites, such as Sportsnavi, and individual team sites and use a translation Ap, although I have not had much luck with this approach as the translations are often poor.


    A great resource for following Japanese baseball is japanball.com, the home for the baseball tourism company JapanBall. Their site includes pages featuring each NPB team and stadium, articles on the history of the game and current players, exclusive interviews, current NPB news, game schedules and statistics, and information on their organized tours of Japan. You can also sign up for weekly updates on NPB via email. 

    One of the easiest ways to follow NPB is by subscribing to select YouTube channels. Pacific League TV Official is a Japanese-language channel that contains over twenty-two thousand videos, including game highlights, player profiles, and much more. Pacific League Marketing also has an English-language channel called Pacific League TV, with nearly two thousand videos. The channel contains highlights, features on top Japanese and foreign players, archived games with English commentary, a podcast, and my favorite: the top-ten plays of the week.

    There are two other can’t-miss YouTube channels for English-speaking fans. The Gaijin Baseball channel is one of my favorites. It contains about one hundred videos on the history of Japanese baseball. The stories are well researched and often contain compelling narratives with great graphics. This is the best place on the web for a beginner to learn about the history of the game in Japan. JapanBall has recently started a YouTube channel which contains updates of the current season as well as features on individual players and selected topics.

    In July 2025, former NPB and KBO player David McKinnon along with journalist Jasper Spanjaart created Pacificswings.com. This site features video discussions of Asian baseball along with interviews of current and past players.

    Full games, albeit with Japanese commentators, are also available. Pacific League games are easily viewed on Pacific League TV, a subscription service run by Pacific League Marketing that provides live games and archived games dating back to 2012. As the name suggests, the service only contains games from the Pacific League, along with interleague games held in Pacific League ballparks. Besides the games, the Pacificleague.com website contains thousands of videos, including game highlights, player profiles, news, and feature stories and league and player stats. The website and the games are in Japanese only, but there is an English-language page providing directions on how to join and navigate the site. As discussed above, Pacficleague.com also runs two YouTube channels, one in Japanese and one in English.


    There is no single location to watch Central League games, but one can subscribe to various teams’ streaming channels or subscribe to a Japanese cable TV package. For example, Nozomi provides over eighty Japanese channels, allowing one to watch many Central League games both live and archived for two weeks after the initial broadcast. Programs can also be recorded. More information on watching Japanese baseball games can be found in this excellent article on japanball.com. 

    Korean Baseball

    For English-speaking baseball fans, following the Korea Baseball Organization (KBO) is easier than ever, thanks to a growing number of platforms offering games, highlights, and stats in English or with minimal language barriers.

    The most comprehensive way to watch KBO games live in the U.S. is via SOOP, which streams every game live with Korean commentary. While it lacks English audio, it’s perfect for fans who want real-time access to all matchups.

    For English-language coverage, the best option is the KBO Channel on Plex. Each day, one game is streamed live with Korean play-by-play, followed by a 24/7 replay stream of recent games, all featuring English AI commentary. This makes it easy for fans to catch up at any time and follow the season in their time zone.

    If you prefer highlights, the official KBO YouTube channel is a reliable source. Although entirely in Korean, it features medium-form highlight packages for every game, with key hits, big strikeouts, full innings, and significant moments. The visual focus makes it easy to follow even without understanding the commentary.

    For real-time stats and box scores, MyKBO Stats is the top destination for English speakers. Created by Dan Kurtz, the site provides live box scores, team and player stats, and historical data going back to 2013. It’s a must-bookmark for serious fans. You can also follow Kurtz on X (formerly Twitter) for regular updates and news.

    For those looking for deeper analytics and historical data, STATIZ is a goldmine. Though the site is in Korean, it works well with browser-based translation tools and offers advanced stats and box scores all the way back to the league’s founding in 1982. It’s ideal for fans interested in diving into the numbers behind the game.

    A few Korean news organizations provide KBO coverage in English. The most notable is the Yonhap News Agency, which regularly publishes game recaps, player profiles, and league developments. Their best-known KBO reporter is Jee-ho Yoo, a respected Seoul-based journalist and KBO expert whose work is a go-to resource for international readers.

    Social media is another excellent way to stay connected. The X account “KBO in English” is run by an English-speaking fan based in Korea and offers regular updates and fan-friendly insights. It’s a great way to build familiarity with the league, players, and teams from a Western perspective. Also worth following is Daniel Kim (@DanielKimW), a bilingual baseball analyst who became widely known during ESPN’s KBO coverage in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

    While KBO content is still largely in Korean, English-speaking fans have options to follow the league. SOOP delivers every game live, Plex’s KBO Channel provides English commentary and 24/7 replays, MyKBO Stats covers real-time stats and historical data, and STATIZ offers deep analytics for those willing to use browser translation. Add in highlight reels on YouTube and fan-run social accounts, and there’s a whole ecosystem ready for English-speaking fans to dive into Korean baseball.

    Taiwanese Baseball (CPBL)

    Founded in 1989, the CPBL is more popular than ever, having recently benefited from the completion of Taipei Dome in 2023 and Taiwan’s Premier12 championship in 2024. The league currently consists of six teams who play most of their home games in six stadiums across the country:

    • CTBC Brothers – Intercontinental Stadium, Taichung (YouTube)
    • Fubon Guardians – Xinzhuang Stadium, New Taipei (YouTube)
    • Rakuten Monkeys – Rakuten Taoyuan Stadium, Taoyuan (YouTube)
    • TSG Hawks – Chengcing Lake Stadium, Kaohsiung (YouTube)
    • Uni-President Lions – Tainan Municipal Stadium, Tainan (YouTube)
    • Wei Chuan Dragons – Tianmu Stadium, Taipei (YouTube)

    Taiwanese baseball has very limited English-language coverage. The best source currently is the CPBL official website, which publishes real-time box scores, season schedule, standings, team rosters, and stats in English. Besides the CPBL website, the only major resources for English speakers are:

    • CPBL Stats – news and stats in English; the site’s X account (@gocpbl) regularly posts news and video clips
    • r/cpbl on Reddit – predecessor to CPBL Stats and a good place for updates and questions
    • The Taipei Sun – a newer initiative to cover Taiwanese baseball, including players abroad, in English

    To watch CPBL games, fans can stream via Twitch (available for some teams only) or purchase a CPBL TV subscription from HamiVideo. As of July 2025, subscription plans for home games for each team are ~$2.70/month, or for all games ~$10.30/month. CPBL Stats has an English Guide to CPBL TV that is a bit dated but should still be helpful.