Taiwan baseball team fires four players for match fixing

Oct 30, 2009, 16:00 GMT

Taipei - A Taiwan baseball team on Friday fired four players and said it would not renew contracts with another player and a coach because of match fixing.

Brother Elephants, one of the four teams of the Chinese Professional Baseball League (CPBL), sacked the players who have confessed to throwing games, the Central News Agency (CNA) said.

Of the players, three handed over the money - between 50,000-200,000 Taiwan dollars (1,500-6,000 US dollars) - they took from rookies to prosecutors.

Elephants has also decided not to renew contracts with pitcher Tsao Chin-hui, a former Colorado Rockies and Los Angeles Dodgers player, and coach Chong Ju-Shen, CNA said.

Several other Elephants players have been released on bail after being questioned by prosecutors and could have been fired by Elephants according to CPBL rules, but are being retained because the team questions the fairness of the investigation.

So far three of Taiwan's four teams have been probed over the match-fixing scandal, with the Elephants being the hardest-hit.

Elephants manager Hung Rwei-ho said earlier that if any players were found guilty, he would dissolve the team, but he has now had second thoughts.

'Disbanding the team would create many problems. We will discuss the fate of the team next week with CPBL,' Hung said Friday.

The latest match-fixing scandal broke out Monday and prosecutors have questioned more than a dozen players from three teams, but no one has been indicted yet.

Press reports said the match-fixing began in May, with gangsters paying players up to 3 million Taiwan dollars (90,000 US dollars) for throwing games.

Sports analysts blamed the constant match-fixing scandals in Taiwan baseball's history on a lack of law enforcement, indiscipline in baseball teams and low salaries for players.