Today we're going to look at Taiwan. If the name of the league confuses you, you probably ought to brush up on your Chinese-Taiwanese history. There are only five teams in the CPBL, which is a bit shocking to me. Taiwan won seemingly every Little League World Series in the 70's and 80's, but it didn't really seem to translate into making MLB players. Even so, you would think a country with that sort of baseball history could support more than five top-level teams. Making this all even more shocking is that this league has five teams after absorbing their competition, the Taiwan Major League! The CPBL started in 1989, and the TML started in 1997. The two merged in 2003. The CPBL had up to seven teams at its peak as far as I can tell. It looks like the TML had four teams throughout its run. And somehow that added up to a five team league when they came together. It doesn't really add up to me, and I wonder if there will be another round of expansion now that we're starting to live in a post-Covid world. That remains to be seen, though. As is common in Asian baseball, these teams are named after their corporate ownership rather than the city where they are based. And here are the five current teams. CTBC BrothersFrom: Taichung City Founded: 1989 Stadium: Taichung Intercontinental Stadium Opened: 2006 Capacity: 20,000 Championships: 15 (1991, 1992, 1993, 1994, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2009, 2010, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2019, 2020, 2021) Fubon GuardiansFrom: New Taipei City Founded: 1993 Stadium: Xinzhuang Stadium Opened: 1997 Capacity: 12,500 Championships: 3 (2003, 2004, 2016) Rakuten MonkeysFrom: Taoyuan CIty Founded: 2003 Stadium: Rakuten Taoyuan Stadium Opened: 2010 Capacity: 20,000 Championships: 7 (2006, 2012, 2014, 2015, 2017, 2018, 2019) Uni-President 7-Eleven LionsFrom: Tainan City Founded: 1989 Stadium: Tainan Municipal Stadium Opened: 1931 Capacity: 12,000 Championships: 10 (1991, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2011, 2013, 2020) Wei Chuan DragonsFrom: Taipei
Founded: 1989 Stadium: Tianmu Stadium Opened: 1999 Capacity: 10,500 Championships: 4 (1990, 1997, 1998, 1999) Comments are closed.
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