Macoto Cobras

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Macoto Cobras

League

Chinese Professional Baseball League

Location

Taipei County

Ballpark

none

Year Founded

2003

League championships

2005 1st Half

Taiwan Series championships

none

Colors

Black and orange

Uniforms






Home






Away

The Macoto Cobras (誠泰Cobras) is a professional baseball team belonging to the Chinese Professional Baseball League (CPBL). This team's history can be traced back to early 2001 when local Macoto Bank started to sponsor Taiwan Major League's (TML) Taipei Gida, taking over from the original sponsor Sampo Corporation. After TML's merger with CPBL in early 2003, Macoto Bank decided to run one of the 2 absorbed TML teams and the new team Macoto Gida (誠泰太陽) was formed accordingly along with its sister team First Financial Holdings Agan. Interestingly, during the merger draft Macoto Bank picked the bulk of Macoto Gida's players from Taichung Agan and Chiayi-Tainan Luka, but not the original Taipei Gida. Macoto Bank went on running and changed the team's mascot to animal-style cobras following CPBL's regulations in early 2004.

In 2004 and 2005 this club was head-coached by Taigen Kaku, a legendary Taiwanese pitcher who played for the Seibu Lions for 13 years. In 2005 this team competed with Sinon Bulls in the CPBL championships, but was defeated 0-4.

After the merger of Macoto Bank into Shin Kong Financial Holdings in January 2006, the Shin Kong Financial Holdings finally did not absorb the Cobras due to disagreement on purchase prices as well as its lacking willingness. So during the 2006 season it was Macoto Bank's original chairman Lin Cheng-i(林誠一) and his son, Macoto Bank's original CEO Lin Chih-kuang(林致光) who used their own money to run this team. Unable to afford such burden, after the 2006 season ended the Lins have been trying to sell this team. The Foxconn Corporation was once reportedly interested, but finally in February 2007 it was the Taoyuan-based Jiuhe(九禾) Corporation which came to the takeover agreement with the Lins. However in March 5 2007 this takeover was disapproved by another 4 CPBL teams and the name "Macoto Cobras" will still exist for a while.