CPBL | The League Was Founded in a Hotel Banquet Room (Brother Hotel, Taipei)

The Chinese Professional Baseball League was founded in a banquet room on 南京東路 on 23 October 1989. 兄弟大飯店 — the Brother Hotel — hosted the inaugural meeting because its chairman, 洪騰勝, had spent most of the decade pushing for exactly this. 唐盼盼 of the baseball association took the chairmanship; 洪騰勝 became the league's first secretary-general and later collected the title 職棒之父, the father of professional baseball in Taiwan.

The hotel was a family business before it was a baseball story. Five 洪 brothers pooled their savings and their father's to open it in 1979. In September 1984 they founded an amateur club, the 兄弟大飯店棒球隊, which started in the second division and worked its way up. In 1986 they opened their own ground at 龍潭, making them the first team in Taiwan to own a ballpark. When the league launched, that club became 兄弟象.

The founding four were 兄弟, 味全, 統一 and 三商. It nearly ran differently: 洪騰勝 has said since that 長榮海運 agreed at first and then withdrew over how the professional and amateur games should be separated, which sent him looking for a fourth backer and to a university classmate who ran 三商.

The hotel is still there at 南京東路三段255號, a few minutes from 南京復興 station, still running the same banquet floors. Nothing marks the room. The league it started has outlived two of those four founding clubs and buried and resurrected a third.

📸 Cover: Photo by MAm ROFOW 022, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons — the hotel exterior, 2024.