I went back and forth on what story I should share first, but screw it, let’s dive straight into maybe the craziest and most compromising situation I’ve been in in my entire life - the time gangsters approached me to throw games in 1996 during the CPBL gambling scandal in Taiwan

This thread is going to be quite long so I can share details and provide some insight into what I was thinking at given moments. I want to also make it clear that this has nothing to do with the current CPBL. Anyways, here goes nothing. Get ready for a wild ride

To give you all some background, in the middle of the 1996 season, there were rumors that there some players in the league getting paid to fix games. I didn’t know if there was any truth to this, but I started to gain a little insight after this next thing happened

The Elephants were in town to play us in Taichung for a 4 game series and after one of our first games, guys on their team went out to a bar where they came across some gangsters. These guys happened to get crossed when the Elephants won a game previously that season

Story goes that the gangsters forced them back to their hotel and were very upset that they were on the losing side of the bet. One of the Elephants made the mistake to lip off, they weren’t having it... the gangster pulled out his gun and promptly pistol whipped him in the head

The next day we go to the ballpark, we noticed something was off. There was extra security at our ballpark, and in particular, around their dugout. During warm ups, we noticed a guy had his head wrapped in gauze and that’s when the rumors slowly started to come out

As you can imagine, that was pretty shocking to see so I definitely knew some fishy things were going on. Again, I wasn’t fully sure still if all of these crazy rumors were true, but I found out firsthand very quickly that they were. This is when things get nuts

On a roadtrip, I went out to a small bar with a guy who helped with my team. Had a private room with 20 people, unusual since I normally went out with small groups. When we arrived, a Taiwanese lady speaking English came over to me, asked my name, and what I was doing in Taiwan

I told her I was there playing baseball and that’s when she asked me if I knew what the “untruth game” was... It instantly clicked that she was referring to the fixing of baseball games and probably had a tie to the gangsters who threatened the Elephants

I played dumb and pretended that I had no idea. She proceeded to share with me the details and asked what I thought. As you can imagine, I had a million things running through my head trying to think of a way to switch the subject

It must’ve been clear that I was upset because she said I looked sad, but I played it off that I was fine. As I looked around the room at the people I didn’t know it dawned on me that these guys were indeed gangsters

She proceeded to say they’d give me $10K right now to just think on it, but I told her absolutely no. At this point, I knew I was in some shit. I told her to tell the boss in the room my answer and before she did, she told me “you’re never going to win another game if you don’t”

I watched her walk across the room, tell him what I said, and the boss and I made direct eye contact. He immediately stood up, yelled something in Chinese, and within seconds the music stopped and the party was over

This was supposed to be a celebration party for me joining the gangsters to fix games, which was obviously ruined, and I was told to leave. As everyone filed out, I tried to stayed back, but they were pushing me out the door towards the elevator which I DID NOT want to go in

We were on the 10th floor and at this point, I was feared for my life and unfortunately had my back turned to everyone. Fortunately, the elevator went down... which gave me some relief that we weren’t going to the roof where they’d maybe toss me off

Remember, my back is still turned to these guys and was definitely not out of the clear yet. I was still waiting for someone behind me to choke me out. These seconds felt like hours, but eventually we made it down to the lobby floor and nothing happened. I couldn’t believe it