MLB | Twelve Innings, No Runs, and the Game Taiwan Still Talks About (Taichung Intercontinental Baseball Stadium)

Chien-Ming Wang had no major league job when the 2013 World Baseball Classic started. He had been released, rehabilitated, and released again. What he had was the ball on 2 March 2013 at Taichung Intercontinental Baseball Stadium, at home, in the opening game of the whole tournament. He gave Australia six scoreless innings on four hits and no walks. Chinese Taipei won 4-1, Peng Cheng-min homered, and the infield behind Wang turned three double plays, which is what a good day looks like behind a sinkerballer. Six days later at the Tokyo Dome he did it to Japan as well: six more scoreless innings against the two-time defending champions, who had been shut out for seven. Chinese Taipei could not hold the lead, and Japan won 4-3 in ten innings. Wang's tournament came to twelve innings, ten hits, one walk, three strikeouts and no runs, and Taiwan lost the game everyone still talks about. There is a coda, eleven years later. In November 2024 Wang was pitching coach for the Chinese Taipei staff that beat Japan 4-0 in the final of the WBSC Premier12, at the Tokyo Dome again, ending a 27-game Japanese winning run in international play and taking Taiwan's first title in a senior world tournament. Asked afterwards whether 2013 had crossed his mind, he said that the past was the past and this was a new era. Supporters online had already settled on a description of his role that stuck: the hidden contributor. Visiting. The Intercontinental Baseball Stadium opened in 2006 in Taichung's Beitun District and is the CPBL home of the CTBC Brothers, the club where Wang has worked as a coach since 2020. It hosted World Baseball Classic pool play in 2013 and again in 2023. Tickets are straightforward outside marquee fixtures and international tournaments. Cover: Chien-Ming Wang pitching for Chinese Taipei, 2 March 2013, at this ground, in the opening game of the 2013 World Baseball Classic. Photo: Trevor Grieve, cropped by UCinternational, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Second image: Taichung Intercontinental Baseball Stadium, 2 September 2018. Photo: Macro Monster, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.