Hundreds of thousands of baseball fans, dozens of honest players, and the game's image have been seen as the main casualties of persistent game-fixing in Taiwan's professional baseball league over the past 15 years.
But they aren't the only ones. Local sportswriters have also been tormented by the continuing scandal, which has led them to question their love for the national pastime, the value of their work and careers in the media, and even their trust and belief in others.
"It is very difficult to accept the fact that those games you covered were fixed, and those stories you wrote were kind of a joke," says Lan Tsung-piao, a sportswriter who has been covering baseball since 1991, a year after the Chinese Professional Baseball League (CPBL) , Taiwan's only professional baseball organization, was established.
The game-fixing scandal last year was the sixth in a wave of scandals that has undermined pro baseball in Taiwan since 1996. Similar incidents followed in 2003, 2005, 2007, 2008 and 2009. More than 100 Taiwanese and foreign players and coaches have been implicated in those scandals for allegedly taking bribes from local bookies to throw games.
Even big name players, such as former U.S. major leaguer Tsao Chin-hui, the first Taiwanese pitcher to make it to the big leagues, have not been spared, though Tsao was not indicted by prosecutors.
The scandals have generally sent attendance plummeting, with the league never regaining its popularity of the mid-1990s, when it drew more than 5,000 fans per game. The average has lingered between 1,000 and 2,000 in recent years.
According to Lan, media coverage has also been drastically cut back, and reporters are no longer assigned to cover games outside of Taipei.
Former baseball writer Kerry Wu, who decided to quit covering the game he loves in 2000 and now works as a securities analyst, says there were about 30-40 reporters at each game when the league was at its peak in the 1990s.
But as Lan says: "Now you're lucky if you can find more than four (reporters) in the press room." The experienced baseball writer said he did not sense anything wrong until the scandal broke out in 1997, when he was shocked to learn that some players who were his close friends had been lying to him over the years.
"I still love baseball. I really do, but I'm having trouble figuring out who -- including players and coaches -- to believe, " he says.
Lan still vividly remembers the good times, making the repeated debacles even more difficult to fathom.
He recalls seeing a family of four, days before the 1996 scandal broke out, happily talking about the game in the parking lot of a ballpark with the father explaining baseball rules to his children.
"It was such a lovely and inspiring scene. And that's why I never imagined how deeply those players and scandals would hurt the feelings of these passionate and supporting fans in every corner of the country, " he says.
Wu also suffered through the duplicity, remembering a player who one morning blasted the ethical standards and integrity of those who had been arrested, only to be arrested himself in the afternoon.
Some sportswriters were suspicious of the integrity of the game from the beginning and published their observations, Lan says, but it was very difficult to tell who was throwing games and who was not.
"We could not pretend it was not happening. We had to depend on our instincts but we had no evidence. Some writers, me included, received letters from law firms threatening legal action. Some were even sued, " he laments.
The scandals and declining interest in the game was difficult for these writers to take, Lan's wife told the Central News Agency.
"You're talking about a group of guys who covered the game, went home to watch the replay, and played nothing but baseball video games together when they were on road trips, " she says. "Most of them are baseball junkies who are hopelessly passionate about the game to apathetic degree."
A baseball writer who helped a guilty player write his autobiography before he was implicated in game-fixing allegations, said she "felt cheated after the scandal broke out." Wu says he turned his attention to the U.S. Major League baseball after quitting his job as a reporter and has not been following the domestic league lately. Others have decided to cover amateur competition.
Lan, who still covers baseball to this day, says he thinks the league should suspend operations for one or two years, change its name, and start fresh because the fans have endured too many scandals.
"Otherwise, every error, strikeout and fireworks in the outfield (a signal from bookies) will always be suspicious." Kevin Hsiao, a younger reporter who has been covering the game for only a few years, feels differently.
"For younger reporters like me, we grew up with this league. It's hard to imagine that this league would vanish for even one day, " he says, and Lan acknowledges that Hsiao will probably get his way.
"The show will go on. All we can do is cover the game as well and as responsibly as we can. Hopefully there will be no more scandals. Just don't bet on it." By Chris Wang CNA Staff Reporter enditem/ls