Taiwan baseball coach Chen Baicheng: Landing to train people to receive "batons"

Taiwanese baseball coach Chen Baicheng has found a stage to display his talents in the mainland. The image comes from the Hong Kong Ta Kung Pao

"Second base, second base, go to make up for it", "Look at the ball, run"... On a weekend morning, on the training ground of a baseball club in Chengdu, Chen Baicheng from Taiwan was training young trainees with several coaches. Although Chen Baicheng's contract with the Sichuan provincial baseball team has expired earlier, he still chooses to continue to stay in Chengdu to teach baseball, "I think the future development space of baseball in the mainland is quite broad, and I hope that through the sport of baseball, I can be a bridge for cross-strait exchanges and friendship." "Baseball is one of the most popular sports in Taiwan and in the ascendant in the mainland. In recent years, benefiting from the mainland's facilitation measures, many Taiwan professional baseball players have landed to teach baseball, contributing to cross-strait sports exchanges.

Chen Baicheng, a four-year-old Taiwanese youth Chinese New Year's Eve, was only three or four years old when he first came into contact with baseball as a child, and he would imitate the movements on the side when he went to the stadium with his father to watch the game. After entering elementary school, he began to receive professional training. "Since I started playing baseball in elementary school, I never thought about giving up." Chen Baicheng's baseball path has been quite smooth until he graduated from college and entered the professional team: due to the gathering of good players from all over the world, although he had the opportunity to play in the first year of joining the team and won the "single-game Most Valuable Player", he still felt a lot of pressure. Two or three years after entering the professional team, Chen Baicheng encountered a "bottleneck": he could not find a training method suitable for himself, could not find a longer-term development goal, and was not so focused when participating in training.

Transition from player to coach

Because of the confusion brought about by the "bottleneck period", the young Chen Baicheng began to think about his future. At the suggestion of his predecessors, he retired as a baseball coach in 2015 and regained his purpose and sense of accomplishment. "When a player only needs to train himself well, and as a coach, he needs to think more: why the player's skills have not improved, which players are not in good shape..." Chen Baicheng was full of enthusiasm after finding the direction, and thought deeper and more thoroughly about some issues.

As for teaching on the Sichuan baseball team, Chen Baicheng laughed and called it a "fate meeting". He was invited to lead the team to the mainland to compete, and had a brief contact with the coach of the Sichuan team. His strict requirements and training methods on the pitch impressed the Sichuan team. In 2018, in preparation for the National Games, the Sichuan baseball team wanted to find a Taiwanese coach to join the coaching staff, and after seeing Chen Baicheng in the list recommended by the Taiwan Baseball Association, it immediately hired him.

Before going to Sichuan, Chen Baicheng considered for several months, asking himself whether he was mentally and competently ready, and whether it was worth giving up his job at Taiwan Sport University. At that time, he just happened to take the highest level coach certification in Taiwan, in order to leave no regrets, coupled with the encouragement of the leaders of his alma mater and the support of his family, at the end of 2018, he went to Chengdu to find a new stage for future development.

Teaching according to aptitude was ultimately successful

After coming to the Sichuan baseball team, Chen Baicheng did not rush to participate in the training, but spent a week observing, understanding the team's training methods and the individual characteristics of the players, and discussing with other coaches, hoping to find more effective training methods. "Taiwanese players will have higher concentration, enthusiasm and enthusiasm for baseball, and at the same time, they can judge the right and wrong training methods through actual combat and find corresponding solutions."

In response to these differences, Chen Baicheng brought the playing thinking and training methods of the Taiwan professional team. "I will come up with some new methods and be very strict in the details, so that the players can jump out of the 'comfort zone' and fill in the gaps step by step." These adjustments quickly paid off. In 2019, he led the Sichuan Youth Baseball Team to win the first and second place in the preliminary round of the 2nd National Youth Games, and last year he won the fourth place in the baseball competition of the National Games, which was the team's best result in the National Games.

Go to Pingtan to be the "child king"

Of course, Chen Baicheng is not the only one who has found a "better life" in the mainland. "Post-1990s" Taiwanese baseball coach Yang Yaoze also found a stage to play his talents on the mainland. In Taiwan, due to the long development time of baseball, the number of athletes and coaches, the market has become saturated, Yang Yaoze, who originally planned to take the road of professional baseball, decided to change the track and go to the mainland to develop. He said, "The environmental climate of Pingtan, Fujian Province, is similar to That of Taiwan, is easy to adapt to, and has many policy dividends." In March 2019, Yang Yaoze went to Pingtan Qilin Primary School to teach, became a Taiwanese baseball coach hired by the school, and led more than 50 primary school students to establish a baseball club.

In Yang Yaoze's view, pingtan this group of children who learn baseball have potential, are willing to endure hardships, and are good seedlings for learning baseball. In the 2019 National Junior Baseball Championship, the Pingtan Four-Way Baseball Softball Club led by Yang Yaoze achieved a good result of sixth place.

Yang Yaoze believes that in recent years, the atmosphere of baseball in mainland China has been very good, professional baseball games have developed rapidly, and video broadcasts have also begun to appear, which makes him optimistic about the prospects. This year, he joined the Pingtan Campus of Fujian Information College, teaching college students to play baseball, hoping to make more mainland teenagers fall in love with baseball. (Reporters Xiang Yun and Su Rongrong)