Taiwan to restart Asia Series baseball tournament

Jan 11, 2011, 13:58 GMT

Taipei - Taiwan will restart Asia's biggest baseball event, the Asia Series, following its two-year suspension due to financial problems, Taiwan's baseball league said Tuesday.

The decision to let Taiwan host the games in November was made at Monday's Asia Series Committee meeting in Seoul, the Chinese Professional Baseball League (CPBL) said.

'The 2011 Asia Series will be held in Taiwan in November, with the champion team from Taiwan, Japan, South Korea and China attending,' Richard Wang, CPBL's international affairs director, told the German Press Agency dpa.

'The total cash prize for the games will be about 1.2 million US dollars. CPBL will cover the cost of the games, including the foreign players' plane tickets,' he added.

The Asia Series was launched in 2005 as a formal international baseball event in Asia. It was held in November each year so that each participating country's baseball season had ended and that country could send its champion to the event.

Japan hosted the tournament 2005-2008 as Japan's finances were better than the other Asian nations and it was the only Asian country with an indoor baseball stadium - the Tokyo Dome.

The event was then suspended due to Japan's financial problems, but a scaled-down event was held - in 2009 between Japan and South Korea and in 2010 between Taiwan and South Korea.

To revive the Asia Series with the aim of sending the sport back to the Olympics, Taiwan applied to restart the Asia Series, and the request was granted by the Asia Series Committee Monday.

Wang said the CPBL is treating the Asia Series as Taiwan's biggest baseball event of the year.

'We hope the Asia Series can boost baseball in Asia and hope the International Olympic Committee (IOC) can take notice of this and keep baseball as an Summer Olympics event,' he said.

Baseball was an Olympic sport 1992-2008 and a demonstration sport at some earlier Games. But in 2005, the IOC voted baseball out of the programme for the 2012 and 2016 Games.

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