The sport remained popular following the retreat of the Republic of China to Taiwan despite the Kuomintang (KMT) government's deliberate policy of removing cultural links to Japan.
Baseball was introduced to Taiwan around 1897, but it initially remained a game for Japanese bureaucrats and bankers in the colonial seat of Taihoku (modern-day Taipei).
[4] The baseball team of Kagi Agriculture and Forestry Institute, hailing from southern Taiwan, played its way into the final of that year’s Summer Koshien tournament.
The Taiwan Major League was founded in 1997 by the chairman of TVBS, a popular cable TV channel company, after it lost the nine-year (1997 to 2006) broadcasting rights for CPBL games to Videoland Television Network.
Taiwan has produced great baseball talent, but its best players usually leave for the higher salaries offered by professional teams in Japan, the United States or Canada.
In the 1980s, Taiwanese pitchers Tai-Yuan Kuo and Katsuo Soh (莊勝雄) posted impressive numbers at the Seibu Lions and Chiba Lotte Marines, in Japan's Nippon Professional Baseball.
Young stars, such as outfielder Chin-Feng Chen and pitchers Chien-Ming Wang, Chin-Hui Tsao, and Hong-Chih Kuo, became the first group of Taiwanese players to play for teams in North American Major League Baseball.