The conference followed a march through Taipei by baseball fans last Sunday to express their concern that recent game fixing scandals will mean the end of professional baseball in Taiwan.

The Executive Yuan should form a special baseball taskforce chaired by Vice Premier Eric Liluan Chu to gather opinions from the Cabinet-level Sports Affairs Council, from baseball teams and from fans, and turn them into concrete suggestions by the end of the month, presidential spokesman Wang Yu-chi quoted Ma as saying.

Preventing corruption was more important than reacting to scandals, Ma said. He suggested that the Ministry of Justice and the National Police Administration should assist with the setting up of anti-corruption departments within each team comparable to similar units within government ministries.

Pay for baseball players should be raised to reduce the lure of corruption, while a free-agent system and an arbitration body also need to be established, according to the conference.

The Executive Yuan will take a generous attitude to the possible impact on the budget and the need for extra legislation, while each relevant government department was expected to come up with a baseball recovery plan of its own, reports said.

Ma pleaded with the baseball teams to stay in the game and promised the government would not just let them fade away. Every Taiwanese had been moved by the game at one time or another, the president said.

“I am running with everyone” on the road to the recovery of baseball, Ma reportedly said.

The representative of the fans at Tuesday’s conference, Yu Tsung-ming, criticized the suggestions from government departments as insufficient. He singled out Justice Minister Wang Ching-feng for only coming up with proposals for legal amendments, but praised the police for suggesting increased protection of players. Previous game fixing scandals saw figures from organized crime threatening players and their families.

SAC Minister Dai Hsia-ling said after the conference that she was even more confident that baseball games would proceed normally next year.

The government was already planning to spend NT$110 million a year on the sport beginning next year, while the Ministry of Education had NT$100 million a year available for baseball at primary and secondary schools, Dai said. She added that the government money was not going to the Chinese Professional Baseball League, but to the sport in general.

The latest scandal broke into the open when prosecutors detained six alleged members of a game fixing ring in late October. The investigation gradually uncovered that the ring paid players with money and sex to lose games.

First about a dozen players with the Brother Elephants were implied, but later some members of the La New Bears also became involved. The CPBL only counts two other teams, the Sinon Bulls and the Uni-President Lions. Dai said Tuesday that no teams were likely to leave the CPBL for the time being, but that the adherence of new members was also unlikely.

The Japanese manager of the Elephants, Shin Nakagomi, was stopped as he tried to leave the country.

Some players admitted to having taken part in the scheme, and agreed to pay the money back which they received from the ring. Others insisted they were innocent. The latter category includes two of Taiwan’s most famous players, Elephants pitcher Tsao Chin-hui, formerly with the Colorado Rockies and the Los Angeles Dodgers, and Bears pitcher Chang Chih-chia, who once played with the Seibu Lions in Japan.