Getting Into Baseball

In the summer of 1981, Chia-Tse Hsu was born in Tainan City, Taiwan.

During his third year of elementary school, Hsu transferred to Tainan Chung-Shueh Elementary School. He was a particularly lively child who had endless energy every day. “At that time, my family said I was particularly active, and coincidentally, the new school had a baseball team, so they let me sign up and hoped that I could spend some of my energy training every day.”

“I just participated in it as a club activity at the time, and sometimes I didn’t even sign up for the competitions,” he said.

But he didn’t expect that his family’s suggestion would lead to baseball entering his life forever.

Turning Point

Six years later, he was admitted to Tainan Nan Ying Senior Commercial & Industrial Vocational School as a sports specialty student on the school’s junior baseball team. At that time, he was in the most youthful and vigorous period of his life.  He didn’t practice well in daily team training, and the worst thing was that he liked to play and neglected to learn.

Then, when Hsu was at his lowest point in life, he met his mentor, Coach Hsien-Jung Chen. “Coach Chen saw that I had a suitable physique for playing baseball, so he tried to enlighten me from a moral perspective. He told me, ‘If you don’t play baseball well, what else will you do? It’s time to pick yourself up and think seriously about your future.'”

In the following year, Hsu began to take baseball seriously. 

“So, from that period onwards, throughout my first year of high school, I almost always had to go for extra training after every practice. I would usually come home around 10 pm to eat.” Hsu’s early departure and late return behavior also caught the attention of his family. 

“Actually, during that period, my family thought that I was practicing for longer hours, but I was demanding more of myself. This affected my entire academic year, and I usually returned home at around 9 or 10 pm. My family always wondered why I came home so late, as they expected me to come home around 5 or 6 pm like other children. Later, after my family communicated with Coach Chen, they found out that I wanted to have extra training with a few good friends.”

However, his hard work paid off during his second year of high school. As a “backup player” who couldn’t even make the substitute list for the baseball team, Hsu eventually stood out from all 80 players in his school and was selected as one of the 18 players to compete in the national league.

In the first game, Hsu was unexpectedly a starter. 

“When the coach announced the starting list, my teammates were surprised. The coach couldn’t find me during pre-match practice because I was too nervous and had diarrhea. The opponent was a team from Kaohsiung, and their pitcher was Chin-Hui Tsao, who later played for the Los Angeles Dodgers in the United States and was a star player in the Taiwanese high school league at that time. Moreover, that game was televised, so I was very worried about not performing well.”

Fortunately, he performed very well in that game, with three to four high-profile plays and one double play. In the following two years, Hsu also established himself as the fourth batter on the team and helped the school achieve second place in the national league.

As a high school student, Hsu devoted himself to playing baseball and achieved excellent results. This outstanding performance brought him various opportunities, including being granted early admission to college as an athletic recruit.

“At that time, it was like everyone had not taken the test yet, but I already had a 30% advantage because of my status as an athletic recruit. So, this also proved what Coach Chen said, that if you are not good at studying, you can use sports to gain admission to college and get more knowledge and opportunities. If I hadn’t taken baseball seriously, registered, and worked hard, I wouldn’t have achieved good results and wouldn’t have had the opportunity to go to college.”

With his baseball dream in mind, Hsu left the high school campus and embarked on a new journey.

“I don’t want to go to college.”

When I asked Hsu if he felt proud and happy that baseball helped him get into college, his answer surprised me.

“Actually, I didn’t plan on going to college.” That was his first thought after graduation because he hoped to lead a decent life without further education.

At the time, there were two government baseball teams in Taiwan, one called the Cooperative Bank, a bank team, and the other was the Taiwan Power Company, a team owned by the power company. If a player was selected by either of these two teams, they had the opportunity to become a civil servant and earn a monthly salary of NT$( New Taiwan dollar)30,000 to $40,000.

“I just thought that if I could join one of these two teams, I could lead a decent life. So, I really didn’t want to go to college.”

However, Hsu’s mother and uncle, who were both teachers, opposed his decision to give up the opportunity to continue his education for short-term benefits. 

“My mother and uncle said that I shouldn’t give up going to college for the sake of making money. Having a college degree is useful. They also believed that starting a professional baseball career directly is not a good idea because athletes are prone to injuries, and their career is too short. With a college degree, there’s a backup plan after retirement.”

So, he eventually decided to attend Chia Nan University of Pharmacy and Science in Taiwan. But in his heart, he had a new goal.

“My only goal in college was to enter the National Reserve Team so that I could continue my sports career during my military service.”

In Taiwan, every man who is 18 years old is required to mandatory military service, which can be fatal for many athletes as they may miss out on training opportunities.

During his college years, he joined the China Trust Whales’ A-level team and participated in the adult baseball league. Only by doing so, he had the opportunity to showcase his talents and be discovered by scouts.

When playing for the China Trust Whales’ A-level team, he trained with his teammates every night in order to achieve his best swing.

“That was the toughest time for my batting training. I trained almost every night, hitting over a thousand balls each time. During that time, I changed my batting gloves every two weeks. It was really painful, but it taught me a lot of baseball skills.”

Three hours of training every night may sound tough, but Hsu persevered. His batting skills underwent a significant improvement under the hammering of coaches and teammates, and he won the league’s home run king title.

His outstanding performance not only enabled him to be selected by the National Reserve Team but also caught the attention of professional baseball scouts.

Short and Regrettable Professional Career

After Chia-Tse Hsu retired from the national reserve team, the Taiwan Sinon Bulls baseball team signed him, officially entering the professional baseball industry.

When I asked him what he felt was the biggest difference in professional teams, he said, “back in student days, coaches would arrange everything for you, what you need to practice, what to improve on, and the training ends when it’s done. But in professional teams, it’s not like that. The club has a schedule for everyone to follow, and if you want to train individually, you have to ask the coach to make a separate schedule for you or find time to train after group practice. The most realistic thing about professional teams is that they don’t care about you, as long as you can deliver results. That was the biggest difference I felt before joining.”

Hsu said he was ready to continue his career as a professional player, practicing hard every day, and hoped to become a regular player for the first team someday.

However, things didn’t go as smoothly as he imagined.

A torn ligament in his leg dealt a severe blow to his career.

“Professional clubs are very realistic. If you get injured, they really can’t wait for you too long, especially when you’re not a regular player. If you’re a star player, they may, and I mean maybe, give you more time. But if you can’t return to your previous form, you’ll still be traded. The biggest variable is that you don’t know where your next step will be.”

After the injury, Hsu not only faced pressure from the club but also from his family.

“At that time, I was quite conflicted, and my family was against me continuing down the professional path. My mom thought, ‘You’re injured. How much longer can you play?’ Of course, from my mom’s perspective as a teacher, she doesn’t know the athlete’s environment, and she always feels like I should look for another stage. The Taipei Brothers Elephant team wanted to wait for me, hoping I could transfer to their team after I recovered. But I’m the kind of person who only shares good news, not bad, so at that time, my family was hardly involved in my life and work. I was also concerned about my mom’s health, as she was always afraid I would get hurt.”

After a long period of struggle, Chia-Tse Hsu ultimately gave up his dream and chose to retire.

“This is the biggest regret of my life. If I were given another chance to choose again, maybe I would pursue it without hesitation.” After saying this, Hsu fell silent for a long time. “Because during that time, I felt that my skills were not inferior to those still playing professionally. But sports is about results, and because it’s about results, I feel very regretful now.”

Making Up for Regrets

After retiring, Chia-Tse Hsu took two months to rest. In June 2005, he received an invitation from his alma mater, Tainan Nan Ying Senior Commercial & Industrial Vocational School, to become one of the team’s head coaches. Together with his mentor, Hsien-Jung Chen, they led young players to compete in the youth league. Over the next four years, he led this traditional Taiwan high school baseball powerhouse to numerous victories, including first place in the wooden bat division, third place in the aluminum bat division of the high school baseball league, third place in the top division of the national Yushan Cup and the championship in the Taiwan Cup. During his tenure, he also led the Tainan region representative Chinese team to participate in the Little League Baseball World Series in the United States, winning the championship and earning himself the honor of the tournament’s best head coach.

“It was because the regret of my professional career gave me the motivation to have the opportunity to return to my high school alma mater, work with my mentor Chen, and lead the team to even better results, sending some students to play in the United States and Japan. This was my way of making up for the regret and continuing the dream,” said Chia-Tse.

Continuing the Dream

“As an athlete, getting injured, even having surgery, was something I was used to. But at that time, I never imagined that the torn ligament would be the final punctuation mark of my professional career. I actually regretted deciding to retire because I was already luckier than many of my peers who didn’t have the opportunity to choose the path of a professional baseball player. I worked hard from junior high to university graduation, but chose to give up after this final injury. I truly regret it,” Chia-Tse sighed, “Every time someone asks me what my strengths are, I always answer with one sentence: ‘I only know how to play baseball.’ As a baseball player, I am particularly proud, and I really love this sport. In Taiwan, the number of parents and children who love this sport is actually decreasing. I think what I can do is to use the little knowledge that I have to help Taiwan’s youth baseball training regain its glory.”

Chia-Tse’s baseball career was brilliant and inspirational, but also regretful. However, he turned this regret into motivation, helping more children fall in love with the sport and cultivating

many professional players such as Song Jia-Hao, Lin An-Ke, Guo Fu-Lin, and Lin Zhe-Xuan.

Thirty years ago, baseball entered Chia-Tse Hsu’s life and left an indelible mark.