The IV U-23 Baseball World Cup 2022 Begins Amidst Great Excitement on October 13th at the Tianmu Baseball Stadium
The IV U-23 Baseball World Cup 2022 is held from October 13th to 23rd at Tianmu Baseball Stadium, Taichung Intercontinental Baseball Stadium and Douliu Baseball Stadium in Yunlin. This is the first large-scale international baseball event to be held in Taiwan since the outbreak of COVID-19 in 2020. Our players are striving to win the title for the first time on home soil. On behalf of the government, Teng-chiao Lin, Administrative Deputy Minister of the Ministry of Education and Interim Director-General of the Sports Administration, welcomed all teams gathered in Taiwan and announced together with Riccardo Fraccari, president of the World Baseball Softball Confederation (WBSC), that the event has officially begun.
The U-23 Baseball World Cup is the highest level age group competition in baseball. Its predecessor was the biennial U-21 Baseball World Cup, which was established by WBSC and was only held once before being changed to U-23 in 2016. The first edition of the U-23 Baseball World Cup was held in Mexico.
The IV U-23 Baseball World Cup consist of 12 strong teams of Australia, Columbia, Cuba, Germany, Japan, Mexico, the Netherlands, Puerto Rica, South Africa, South Korea, Chinese Taipei, and Venezuela.The opening game took place on the night of October 13th between Chinese Taipei and Columbia at Tianmu Baseball Stadium. WBSC President Riccardo Fraccari, Chinese Taipei Baseball Association (CTBA) President Jeffrey Koo Jr., Taipei Mayor Wen-je Ko, and Sports Administration, Ministry of Education, Interim Director-General Teng-chiao Lin attended the opening ceremony, and Interim Director-General Lin threw the opening pitch. Led by coach Hsieh Cheng-hsun, the U23 players from across Taiwan have intensively trained for two months; professional players based in Taiwan and overseas have been invited to join the team. It is hoped the first game ends in victory and that the team of Chinese Taipei can go on victorious and be crowned the U23 world champion for the first time.
Hosting high-level international sports events in Taiwan, promoting international sports exchange and, at the same time, driving the popularity of sports spectating in Taiwan are important policy directions of the Sports Administration. The games of Chinese Taipei team are open to spectators who purchase entry tickets (for ticketing information, please go to the CTBA website: http://www.ctba.org.tw/). Twenty-four games are broadcast live on Videoland Sports channel and ELTA Sports channel. Baseball fans around the world are invited to watch the broadcasts and cheer for our national team.
