Hsieh Kuo-Cheng Cup National Little League & Junior League Championship

Since its inception in 1990, the Hsieh Kuo-Cheng Cup National Little League and Junior League Championships has been the Foundation's core flagship event. Since 2003, it has served as the exclusive qualifying tournament for the Little League Baseball (LLB) Asia-Pacific Region bid, strictly requiring participating teams to represent a "single school." Over three decades of rigorous competition, Taiwanese representative teams have amassed 18 LLB World Series championships, highlighted by Taipei's Dongyuan Elementary School capturing the world title in 2025, returning Taiwan to Williamsport glory after a 29-year drought.

From the Golden Dragons Little League team's historic first championship in Williamsport in 1969 to Dongyuan Elementary School's undefeated five-game title run in 2025, the Hsieh Kuo-Cheng Cup has witnessed half a century of evolution and glory in Taiwan's grassroots baseball. Countless Little League players who made their mark here have progressed through the Junior and Senior League systems to enter the Chinese Professional Baseball League (CPBL) or international professional arenas, cementing this tournament as the premier cradle of Taiwan's top baseball talent.

Mr. Hsieh Kuo-Cheng (1912-1980), a graduate of the School of Political Science and Economics at Waseda University in Japan, was deeply influenced by the Japanese high school baseball craze. In 1968, he actively facilitated a friendly match between a visiting Japanese Kansai Little League team and Taitung's Hung-Yeh Little League; Hung-Yeh's victory utterly ignited a nationwide passion for baseball in Taiwan. In 1969, he personally fundraised to lead the Golden Dragons Little League team—an all-star team of Taiwan's finest—to Williamsport, USA. There, they captured Taiwan's first-ever Little League World Series championship, ushering in the golden era of Taiwan's "three-tier student baseball" system.

During his tenure as a legislator, Mr. Hsieh championed sports reform. In 1975, he successfully lobbied for the installation of night-game lighting at the Taipei Municipal Baseball Stadium, allowing for evening games. In 1979, he promoted a tax exemption policy for imported sports equipment, drastically reducing costs for grassroots teams. Revered within the community as the "Father of Taiwan Baseball" and the "Father of Taiwan Little League Baseball," he was inducted into the inaugural class of the Taiwan Baseball Hall of Fame in 2014.

In 1990, to carry on his spirit, Mr. Hsieh's family established the Hsieh Kuo-Cheng Baseball Cultural and Educational Foundation and launched the Hsieh Kuo-Cheng Cup National Little League and Junior League Championships. The tournament aims to promote sports for all, elevate the skill level of youth baseball, and select champion teams to represent Taiwan in international competitions.

The Little League division of the Hsieh Kuo-Cheng Cup is for players aged 11 to 12. Games are six innings long and strictly follow a double-elimination format. This structure significantly reduces the chance of early elimination due to a single poor performance, ensuring that the most fundamentally sound teams emerge victorious. Simultaneously, the grueling schedule heavily tests a team's pitching depth and the coaching staff's strategic planning, compelling grassroots coaches to develop deep rotations of 5 to 8 game-ready pitchers.

To protect the arm health of developing players, the tournament enforces strict pitch-count and rest regulations. A pitcher may throw a maximum of six innings per game, with a single pitch counting as a full inning pitched. Pitching more than two innings mandates one day of rest, while pitching more than four innings requires two days of rest. Since 2009, a rule explicitly prohibiting a pitcher from moving to the catcher position in the same game has been in place, effectively mitigating the risk of exposing a player's shoulder and elbow to extreme dual workloads in a single contest.

Participating teams must strictly register as a "single school" unit; forming cross-school all-star teams is prohibited. This regulation perfectly aligns with the community baseball spirit championed by Little League Baseball, encouraging grassroots schools to cultivate their own players from the early grades and ensuring true grassroots development.

From the Golden Dragons Little League team's inaugural championship in 1969 through 1996, Taiwan amassed 17 Little League World Series titles in Williamsport. From the 1970s through the 1990s, a period when Taiwan faced significant diplomatic challenges, the Little League national teams served as a vital channel for showcasing the nation's strength on the global stage. "Staying up late to watch the Williamsport broadcast" became a shared collective memory for the entire population.

In 1997, Taiwan withdrew from Little League Baseball due to a philosophical divergence over team formation (all-star teams versus school-based teams). It wasn't until 2003 that the Taiwanese baseball community decided to re-embrace LLB's core educational values, officially designating the Hsieh Kuo-Cheng Cup as the sole qualifying tournament for the Asia-Pacific Region bid and strictly enforcing the single-school team rule.

In 2009, coinciding with the 40th anniversary of the Golden Dragons' victory, Taoyuan's Guishan Elementary School won the Hsieh Kuo-Cheng Cup and battled their way to the Little League World Series championship game in Williamsport. Although they narrowly lost by a single run in extra innings to finish as world runners-up, it marked Taiwan's best performance since returning to the LLB system. This run proved that even while adhering to the single-school rule, Taiwanese Little League teams still possessed world-shaking talent.

In 2025, Taipei's Dongyuan Elementary School defeated Taoyuan City 11-5 in the Hsieh Kuo-Cheng Cup championship. They then traveled to South Korea, shutting out the Korean host team 2-0 to secure the Asia-Pacific bid. At the Little League World Series in Williamsport, the young Dongyuan squad shut out the US representative from Nevada 7-0, completing an undefeated five-game run to capture Taiwan's 18th world championship and breaking a 29-year title drought. Tournament MVP Lin Chin-tse pitched five scoreless innings and blasted a bases-clearing triple, perfectly illustrating the profound depth of Taiwan's grassroots baseball.

The Youth Park Baseball Stadium in Taipei City has long served as the host venue for the Hsieh Kuo-Cheng Cup, nurturing internationally renowned baseball stars such as Chien-Ming Wang and Wei-Yin Chen. In 2024, the stadium underwent a comprehensive renovation, becoming Taipei's first artificial turf Little League field. In June 2025, the Taipei City Department of Sports and the Hsieh Kuo-Cheng Baseball Cultural and Educational Foundation signed a Memorandum of Understanding, with the foundation investing resources for further venue optimization. In profound gratitude for Mr. Hsieh Kuo-Cheng's historical contributions to Taiwan baseball, the venue is slated to be officially named the "Youth Park Hsieh Kuo-Cheng Memorial Baseball Stadium" in 2026.