Ask a Taiwanese what is the most famous baseball team in Taiwan and the answer will probably not be any particular pro baseball squad, but rather an obscure elementary school team that rose to achieve international fame and eventually helped Taiwan’s baseball to reach out to the world.

The name of the team: Hongye (Red Leaves) Little League Team.

The Hongye team lived a Cinderella tale by claiming an astonishing victory over a visiting Japanese rival in 1968 for which they are remembered even today.

The team was not made up of elite players from around the nation. They were all Bunun tribe aboriginal students from a primary school with less than 100 students, located in the isolated village of Hongye in Taitung County in southeastern Taiwan.

The rise of Hongye

The story began in the year 1963 when the principal of Hongye Elementary School, Lin Chu-peng, decided to form a baseball team for no other reason but to encourage aboriginal students to go to school. It seemed they enjoyed hunting in the woods more than they liked attending classes.

Lin convinced the township office secretary Ku Yi, a former baseballer during the Japanese occupation period, to act as coach of the team. As for the young students, they were all more than happy to join the team, but the school in a remote mountain village lacked sufficient funds for their basic baseball training and equipment.

Rather than give up, coach Ku made use of wooden sticks and rocks to serve as baseball bats and balls in training these budding players, who ran barefoot along primitive basepaths on a ball field full of pebbles.

The primitive baseball equipment later proved to be strikingly effective for these aboriginal kids, who promptly won the Yanping village championship and Taitung Mayor’s Cup in their debut season.  

The team continued to shine in county-wide competitions and later national games. Eventually Hongye won the island-wide Students’ Cup Tournament championship title held in Taipei in 1968, beating more well-heeled counterparts from around the island.

A David versus Goliath tale

The most celebrated game played by the team from Taitung, and the one that eventually made it immortal, however, was not the national championship crown. It was rather a game held in August in the same year in the capital city of Taipei. The local baseballers went head to head with a visiting all-star team from Japan’s Wakayama, located in the densely populated Kansai area. It was the first time Japan had sent a Little League team to Taiwan.

Because of media exaggeration, the visiting team from Japan was widely believed to have won the 1967 Little League World Series Champion before coming to Taiwan to take on the local team. In reality, only one of the Japanese players in the 68-strong roster had been on the previous year’s squad.

Nonetheless the team still consisted of many experienced players, and it seemed the visitors would have no problem handling the local team.

Despite the fact that the game was billed as a friendly match, it still attracted more than twenty thousand fans who packed the stands.

The state-run and only TV station at that time, Taiwan Television Enterprise, also covered the game live, even delaying other programs and broadcasting the game and related stories for more than 13 hours.

Famous veteran TTE sports broadcaster Fu Ta-jen recalled that the baseball stadium was so crowded that many people who couldn’t find a seat chose to climb up to the nearby trees just to witness the historic game. A few unfortunate souls fell to the ground in their excitement and were injured. 

In front of the huge, frenzied crowd together with tens of thousand other nationals watching the game on TV, Hongye’s ace starter Hu Wu-han successfully shut down Japan’s offense by hurling 14 strikeouts as the Hongye side routed their opponents with a 7 - 0 win. 
Two days later the Chinese United team, which was composed mainly of Hongye players, again defeated the Japanese team by the score of 5-1, proving that the previous win wasn’t beginner’s luck.

To the Taiwanese people, these key victories over a foreign rival, particularly a team from Japan - the country that at one time occupied Taiwan, and the ones who originally imported the sport to the island - were highly significant.

After all, it was the Hongye victory that convinced Taiwan’s Chinese Baseball Association to dispatch teams to take part in the Little League Baseball Tournament in 1969. The move paved the way for the subsequent Taiwan Dynasty at Williamsport as hometown boys won a total of 13 Little League World Series championships between 1969 and 1982.

As one newspaper headline crowed, “(Hongye) did not let the country down; the little soldiers shocked Japan,” showing that the significance of the wins was not only on a sports level; it also helped to beef up the confidence of the nation as a whole.

Island-wide fame

Bolstered by the television coverage and intensive reporting by local media, the Hongye team phenomenon swept across the island nation like a storm.

When the now nationally-famous team launched an around-the-island tour and made a stop for two games in the southern county of Chiayi, it was reported that more than 100,000 people flocked into the county just to witness their games.

The overnight fame won the team a huge windfall of public and private donations, and also made the team’s ace hurler Hu a household name. Hu was dubbed the “Magic head” because of his dominance on the mound.

In light of their strong performance, the government even sponsored the team on trips to Japan and the Philippines to participate in tournaments. Several film companies were also eagerly prepared to make movies out of the famous David versus Goliath tale.

Cruel revelation 

Nevertheless, Hongye’s overnight glory and the jubilation brought on by their victories over the stronger East Asian rival were promptly dampened and tarnished by a cruel revelation.

Not long after Hongye’s stunning victory, an anonymous source filed a report to authorities, accusing the Taitung team of using ineligible players ever since the Students’ Cup Tournament.

It turned out that of the 13 players on the roster, eight were playing under assumed names, including Hu, whose real name was Chiang Wan-hsing. 
According to school authorities, the reason the players were listed under false names was because many of them were over the official Little League Baseball age limit of 12.

To qualify for the island-wide Students’ Cup Tournament championship in which the team won first place, the school sanctioned the practice of name-borrowing, allowing their star players to use the names of other students who were under the age limit.

Even though the overage player and forgery scandal had little to do with the victories over the Japanese team, as the games were friendly ones and therefore not subject to the LLB rules, the scandal was still believed to have tarnished Hongye’s glory.

The prosecutors were forced to handle the case during late night hours in order to prevent arousing attention that might have brought shame to the nation as a whole. In the end, the Taitung District Court sentenced the three school representatives to one-year sentences with two year suspended sentences.

With the deliberate cover-up of the case by authorities, the infamous lawsuit has remained largely unknown to most Taiwanese people even today.

Despite the somewhat disgraceful scandal, to Taiwanese the team symbolizes an important milestone and turning point for Taiwan baseball.

As Broadcaster Fu noted, “we know of the forgery scandal of Hongye, but it does not diminish their important status in baseball.” “If it had not been for Hongye, Taiwan’s baseball culture would not have developed so vibrantly.”

The fall of Hongye

However, the incident might brought bad luck to the whole team and as if doomed, many of the Hongye players were stricken by a series of unfortunate incidents.

To date, seven of the 13 players on the 1969 Hongye team have already passed away.
Even more striking is that all of them died young, in their thirties, including the famous hurler Chiang, who died at the age of 37 due to liver cancer contracted through heavy drinking.

The sad story behind Hongye is that because of financial difficulties, many of the talented young players from underprivileged families failed to continue their education and thus lost the chances to extend their baseball careers.

To make things worse, the government that first made use of their victory to boost the nation’s confidence, as well as international visibility, later paid little attention to these budding talents.

The result of the authority’s indifference was that many of these former Little League players turned to alcohol, finally leading to their early deaths.

One ex-team member, catcher Chiang Hung-hui, who now works in a plastic factory, said in a documentary that their former glory in the baseball field was “nothing but a nightmare.” 

The legend continues

Nevertheless, despite the nightmarish stories behind the first generation Hongye, the byword for Taiwan baseball, did not simply die away, and the story of Red Leaves continues today. More than forty years after the 1968 victory, two baseball players who are offspring of that legendary Hongye squad, are batting vigorously and running the bases on the diamond.

They are shortstop Chiu Te-sheng’s oldest son, Chiu Chun-wen, and centerfielder Yu Hung-kai’s son Yu Hsien-ming. Chiu used to play for the local pro team Chinatrust Whales, while Yu is currently an outfielder for the Sinon Bears. They both inherited their father’s athleticism and the love for the sport that runs in their veins.

In addition, a Hongye Little League Baseball Museum was established in 1992 at Hongye Elementary School to commemorate these young national heroes and their glory as well as their sad stories.

Recently incumbent Hongye Elementary School Principal Liu Hsu-lung announced that his school will be recruiting new blood to form a baseball team in hopes of recapturing the former glory of Hongye.   
As the younger generation in this storied baseball stronghold continues to shed their sweat, and even blood and tears, out on the field, the spirit of Hongye will definitely be alive and flourishing in days to come.

The name of the team will always be remembered by every Taiwanese as a byword for baseball in the nation as it symbolizes the true spirit of Taiwan for their unswerving determination, and it also reminds the whole country and its people to have faith in their unlimited potential in the future.