“Hero! Hito! The Road to the Champion” - WBSC Premier12 2024 Chinese Taipei Documentary premiered with success
On the night of November 24, 2024, when Chinese Taipei clinched their first-ever WBSC Premier12 championship, Simon Chen, Founder and CEO of ADATA Technology Co., Ltd., the second-largest memory card manufacturer in the world, decided to produce a documentary to commemorate the unprecedented achievement.
Chen, a distinguished alumnus and player from baseball powerhouse Pu-Tzu Elementary School in Chiayi City, watching the clinching moment on TV, wanted to share the inspiring underdog story of Chinese Taipei with baseball fans around the world.
A few weeks later, a three-person production team led by director Lungnan Isak Fangas, executive producers Kent Chang and Huang, was ready to step up to the plate to hit a home run in the history of Taiwan’s sports documentary.
The Trio
Just like everyone else in Taiwan who has their own baseball story, Fangas was scouted by the renowned RSEA baseball club during his grade school days, but was too hesitant to make the move. Years later, Fangas became the catcher on his college team and met his future wife, who served as the team's staff.
“I prepared for 40 years for the fieldwork for this documentary,” said Fangas, 50, at the première, receiving overwhelming cheers and applause. “And I want to tell everyone that if we believe in ourselves, stick to it, the miracles will happen.”
Chang’s baseball story began with his father taking him to games and listening to the radio broadcast. “I have the same name as a Brother Elephants pitcher who started the CPBL inauguration game, and also became the first losing pitcher in CPBL history. Needless to say, I was a sad fan that day.”
When it comes to baseball, Chang, a famous film producer who owns his animation firm, was no less enthusiastic than Fangas. “I was at Yankee Stadium when (former New York Yankees ace and Taiwan Baseball Hall of Famer) Chien-Ming Wang made his debut, and I was at the bar watching Chinese Taipei clinching the Premier12,” said Chang.
At the 2024 year-end banquet, Fangas and Chang convinced Huang, also a renowned documentary director, to join the production team. “We are all baseball fans, of course, but I’d never imagined that I would be involved with a project like this. It’s an honour that we have helped preserve precious memories for Taiwanese baseball,” said Huang.
A Journey Full of Challenges
“We interviewed 37 players within a month,” said Huang. “Including (USA) Ryan Ward when we went to the States for shooting.” The team spent nine days in Arizona to gather footage and interviews.
“And we went to four cities in Japan (Sendai, Osaka, Okayama, and Tokyo) and finished several interviews and shooting in seven days,” said Huang. While the team was in Tokyo, there were concerts at Tokyo Dome, so they were given the midnight slot to complete their shoot.
“While we were given an hour for the interview, with all the on-site briefing, setup, and makeup, we usually were left with thirty minutes or less. And considering the part of translation that sometimes went three ways, we didn’t really have as much time as we’d like to work with.” Chang recalled the trip to Japan as the most challenging of all.
Raidel Martinez (Cuba – Yomiuri Giants), Shosei Togo (Japan – Yomiuri Giants), and Ryosuke Tatsumi (Japan – Rakuten Eagles) were among the international players interviewed, in addition to Ward (USA – LA Dodgers).
Among Taiwan, Japan, and the USA, the team traveled a combined total of more than 35,000 kilometres, with more than 70 personnel interviewed and 49 presented in the film.
The Hurdles
While the production team is composed of industry-leading professionals, they’ve encountered a new territory that they have never experienced while producing the films. “The amount of work on licensing is really amazing,” said Chang.
According to the crew, more than 200 licensing agreements were signed, including the authorisation from the WBSC, CPBL (Chinese Professional Baseball League), and CTBA (Chinese Taipei Baseball Association), among others. “We signed agreements with 30+ organizations, secured 100+ portrait rights and 400+ licensing items,” said Huang.
Chang was the key person in corresponding with licensing requests. “We wrote more than 600 overseas emails regarding the licensing issues alone,” said Chang.
The team also contributed to the smooth negotiations and signing of the agreements through the tremendous support of Vanessa Hsu's team, the special assistant to Chen.
“We secured more than 300+ hours of footage and presented the fans with a 1 hour, 58 minutes, and 23 frames movie,” said Fangas.
The Plot
The movie started with the Super Round game between Chinese Taipei and Japan at the 2013 World Baseball Classic, which spanned more than four hours and thirty-seven minutes, with Japan coming from behind to edge Chinese Taipei, 4-3, in 10 innings.
That game was widely considered the moment when Taiwanese baseball came closest to defeating the world No. 1, and the result has become one of the most heartbreaking and hard-to-swallow memories for all Taiwanese baseball fans.
“It was indeed an unforgettable game,” said Chih-Kang Kao, then the Chinese Taipei catcher before becoming the bench coach of the Premier12 2024 presented by RAXUS Chinese Taipei team. Many players on the WBC 2013 Chinese Taipei team, such as Cheng-Min Peng, Chih-Kang Kao, Chien-Ming Wang, and Chiang-Ho Chen, were members of the Premier12 2024 coach staff.
The documentary's storyline then took the fans back to the opening game of the WBSC Premier12 2024 between Chinese Taipei and Korea, followed by a look back at Chinese Taipei ace Yu-Min Lin’s career. Interviews with the manager, scouting coaches, catcher Chia-Cheng Lin, captain, and WBSC Premier12 2024 MVP Chieh-Hsien Chen, pitcher Yi Chang, were among the players interviewed as the director presented their career paths from Taiwan to the US and Japan.
CTBC Brothers cheerleader Hazle Wu (QunQun), Rakuten Monkeys Promotion Leader Jing-Wen Lan (LanLan), CTBC Brothers cheering group head Kenta Wu, and Yi Chang’s sister Nasia were among the characters interviewed, especially for their participation in the Super Round in Tokyo Dome.
The documentary also revealed a dilemma faced by pitcher En-Tzu Huang during the tournament: his wedding banquet was initially scheduled for November 23rd, 2025, one day before the championship final. Huang was reluctant to announce the wedding plan to the team, not wanting it to be a distraction during the tournament, and was struggling to find the best solution, including placing a real-life-size cardboard cutout mannequin next to the bride on the stage in his absence. Eventually, the wedding date was pushed back to accommodate the tournament schedule, and the bride welcomed the world champion groom home.
A tribute to Taiwan baseball
By highlighting the most heartbreaking moment for Taiwanese baseball fans from the very beginning of the film, the storytelling of “Hero! Hito! The Road to the Champion” cleverly connects the past and the present, providing fans with a sense of closure. At the same time, many of them have considered their PTSD healed eleven years after that gut-wrenching loss, but only the fans of the losing team would understand.
“What I really wanted to emphasise is that, with unwavering determination and resolve, everything is possible,” said Fangas.
“We have been baseball fans all our lives, and I hope this film not only provides the closure for that WBC game in 2013 but also strengthens our own belief and confidence in facing challenges in the future,” said Chang.
The documentary is scheduled to hit theatres on January 1st, 2026, with special screenings for the public at selected theatres on Christmas Day.
With more than 95 first-run cinemas presenting the film, it has become the most distributed documentary in Taiwan cinematic history, far surpassing the Golden Horse-winning “Beyond Beauty – Taiwan from Above (2013, Po-Lin Chi, 40 first-run cinemas) and “A Chip Odyssey (2025, Chu-Chen Hsiao, 56 first-run cinemas).
“This film is a love letter to Taiwanese baseball fans,” said baseball journalist Hung-Bin Lee of the Chinatimes, “Baseball is the true love of the people on this land.”