Taipei, Feb. 19 (CNA) Taiwan's national baseball team has one last chance to earn a berth in the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games baseball tournament, and despite the likely absence of its foreign-based players, the team says it's ready.
It better be.
The squad drew the wrath of home fans late last year when it finished an embarrassing eighth in the Baseball World Cup in November and a disappointing third in the Asian Baseball Championship in December, and many worried that baseball in Taiwan was in a state of permanent decline.
But the team can redeem itself by finishing in the top three of the final eight-team Olympic qualifying tournament that will be held in Taichung and Douliou in central Taiwan from March 7-14.
"In fact, this is a five-for-three competition, " manager Hung Yi-chung said in Taichung, where the team is training for the tournament.
Hung was referring to the quality of the field, with five countries -- Taiwan, South Korea, Canada, Australia and Mexico -- expected to compete for the final three Olympic slots.
The remaining three teams, international baseball minnows Germany, Spain and South Africa, are seen as having little chance of staging a breakthrough.
South Korea is expected to be the strongest team, Hung said, so Taiwan's game plan will be to win two of its three round robin games against Australia, Mexico and Canada to secure a top three finish.
Hung's task will be complicated by the absence of Taiwan's foreign-based stars. Pitchers Tsao Chin-hui and Keng Po-hsuan, who play in the United States, and Lin En-yu and Hsu Ming-chieh, who pitch in Japan, have all dropped out and opted to concentrate on advancing their professional careers.
That means Hung will be left with a roster composed mostly of players who compete in Taiwan's Chinese Professional Baseball League or local amateurs, but the manager said he's prepared to play with an all-local 24-man roster if need be.
Regardless of how the roster shapes up, Hung said, Taiwan will still try to win every game, and could be helped by having more information on its opponents.
Local baseball commentators blasted the national team for poor scouting after its disappointing finishes in the Baseball World Cup and Asian Championship, but it has made more of an effort before this tourney to learn its adversaries' tendancies.
Players have been watching a lot of film from games played by Canada, Mexico and Australia, Hung said, and he believed the three teams will not be as strong as their World Cup squads because they'll be missing some of their U.S. Major League players.
Major League Baseball has prohibited players on teams' 40-man rosters from participating in the Olympic qualifiers.
Hung hopes to have his team sharp by the time the tournament opens next month. To get the players back into game condition, the national squad will play a six-game warm-up series against the six CPBL teams, beginning Feb. 25.