resource for TML and CPBL rosters?

[DaClyde]

Does anyone know of an online resource that might have rosters for the CPBL and the old Taiwan Major League during the 1990s? I am trying to assemble checklists for some of the baseball card sets from Taiwain, but the player names are almost always in Chinese. If I had rosters to work with, I could probably get what I need with Google Translate to be able to work out the names.

And just out of curiosity, why is it that every other countrys' baseball culture seems to put more importance on players uniform numbers than the MLB? It seems EVERY piece of merchandise I see from other countries ties the player to his uniform number. Jersey's aside, you'd be hard pressed to find any American baseball merchandise that makes reference to uniform numbers, least of all baseball cards.

[DaClyde]

Ok, it's a bit clumsy, but I was able to find roster information back to 2007 by using WikiPedia's archives. Still looking for roster information from 1990-2006.

[DaClyde]

One post over on JapaneseBaseball.com, and now I've been provided with a great database of Taiwanese baseball information. I'm steadily filling in the gaps in the 1990-1998 checklists I've already posted to my blog and intend to add more checklists this weekend. Major thanks to Michael Westbay!

[titorondon]

Would you like to share access? I have seen Taiwan in international competition and would like to follow (backwards) some players' careers, like that of pitcher Kuo Lee Chien Fu, for instance.
In Barcelona, in 1991, Nicaragua and Taiwan met in the Bronze Medal game, which was tied in the bottom of the 13th when Ramon Padilla hit a long blast which was going over the center-left fence, about 13' high. The CF, Chen Wei Chen I believe, lept high, caught his spikes on the wire mesh which allowed him to reach over the wall, and almost made an incredible catch. In the celebration of the homer nobody noticed that Chen's foot did not disengage from the fence, and when he fell back down he broke his foot grotesquely. I thought he would never play again... Years later a press released mentioned him as participating in the TML; I was relieved but would like to learn a bit more.

[DaClyde]

Since he posted the link in his response to me in the JapaneseBaseball.com forum, I guess it's open for public consumption. He's got it loaded in his Google Docs:

CPBL and TML database

If you want to sort or edit, I recommend downloading it for local use.

It's not comprehensive, but it is very thorough for the time period it covers.

[titorondon]

Thank you!