【Chinese Baseball League -Week 1 Digest】
Traditional Power Dominate; Younger Teams Fall Short

Chinese　Japanese

The 2007 Chinese Baseball League season opened at Wuxi Stadium this past weekend. Dignitaries attending the game included: Chinese Small-Ball Association Director Lei Jun, Wuxi Political Consultant Bureau Director Han Jun, Wuxi Vice Mayor Ma Jianguo, and Chinese Baseball Association Secretary Shen Wei. Also in attendance at the opening ceremony were: Liu Xiao, assistant director of sports marketing for league sponsor Mizuno China, a group director of the Chiba Lotte Marines (sister club of the Jiangsu Hopestars).

After a vibrant opening ceremony, the Jiangsu Hopestars took their first steps together as a team completely composed of members of the Jiangsu provincial team. Despite easily taking the first game of a best of three series, 5-3 against the lackluster hitting Shanghai Eagles, they dropped the remaining two games to the Eagles 5-9 and 1- 13, highlighting their need for more depth and experience in both pitching and hitting. Though youth might be their greatest asset, the Hopestars paid the price for their inexperience by committing 15 errors over the three games. In next week's game against the Sichuan Dragons, the Hopestars will have to deal with an offense that produced 36 hits in the past three games. The Shanghai Eagles will face off against another young team in the Guangdong Leopards - where talent and youth will collide in another weekend series.

The Beijing Tigers met the Sichuan Dragons this past week at Lucheng Field. Despite a shortage of pitching, the Tigers combined home field advantage with well-planned strategy to outmaster the Dragons in taking the front and tail ends of the three game set, 9-8 and 5-3, while dropping the Saturday game 7-8. Next week the Tigers head to Tianjin, where they will rekindle the Beijing-Tianjin rivalry, and battle it out in a three game set.

Tianjin hosted last year's black horse team, the Guangdong Leopards, in the Lions' pen this past week. The unseasoned and untried Leopards team dropped all three games against the Lions, who became the first team this year to sweep their opponents in a weekend series.