world baseball classic

Taipei - Taiwan's baseball team apologized to Taiwan fans Saturday after humiliating defeats by South Korea and China in the first round of the second World Baseball Classic.

Taiwan lost 9-0 to South Korea on Friday and 4-1 to China on Saturday, missing the chance to advance to the second round of the 16-nation tournament.

The Taiwan team will return home Sunday, becoming the first team to be eliminated from the World Classic.

The loss is double humiliation for Taiwan because this is the second time China - which began to train baseball players only a few years ago - has defeated Taiwan. China beat Taiwan 8-7 at the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

At a news conference at the Tokyo Dome, Yeh Chih-hsien, the head coach for the Taiwan team, said Taiwan lost because the players were under extreme stress and Chinese players have improved a lot.

'If we say that China beat Taiwan probably due to luck at the Beijing Olympics, this time we can see they are better than us. They made careful preparations to face Taiwan. We have to do self-examination,' he said.

Starting pitcher Lin Yueh-ping also apologized to Taiwan fans at the news conference broadcast in Taiwan.

'Our fans had high hopes for us to win, but we let them down, and we certainly will face lots of criticism when we return to Taiwan,' he said with tears in his eyes.

Taiwan TV channels showed that many Taiwan fans at the Tokyo Dome cried after Taiwan's defeat to China, some saying the Taiwan team should never go abroad again to avoid losing face.

As in Japan and South Korea, baseball is the national sport in Taiwan.

But in recent years, Taiwan has done poorly in international baseball tournaments due to lack of funds, top players' joining US and Japanese teams and game-fixing scandals.

The other teams in Group A of the World Classic, Japan and South Korea, play Saturday evening with the winning team advancing to the second round - for the top eight - to be played in the United States.