Mr. Philip Li
President
HKBA
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I am honored to write in my capacity of president of the Hong Kong Baseball Association to welcome the eight baseball teams from Australia, China, Nepal, Philippines, Russia, Singapore and Hong Kong to the Hong Kong International Baseball Open 2017. It is worth to note that four teams are the national teams, making a record of the biggest number of national players in this international tournament since its inception in 2012.
Baseball has been popularized round the globe. It is evidenced by the participating teams coming from various emerging baseball places to play this international open over the past five years. The Olympic spirit of "participation is more important than success" embeds the importance of international friendship of athletes and good health of all of us. History tells us popularity of a sport paves the way to achieving medals in the major international sport games such as the world championship and Olympic Games.
The Hong Kong International Baseball Open is getting more and more popular in the international baseball community and moving forward to attract the participation of many more elite athletes. I wish all players, who are going to play this tournament in the next few days, playing to their highest standards and enjoying good friendship during and after the matches.
Philip Li
President of Hong Kong Baseball Association
December 2017
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Dr. Felix Yip
Chairman
HKBA
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I am extremely pleased to announce the start of 2017 HKIBO Tournament on 14th-17th December 2017, with a special feature of three national teams from Nepal, Russia and Singapore competing with our Hong Kong Team in the Tournament this year. It is definitely an encouraging news to us in Hong Kong, signifying the increasingly importance of our Tournament in Asia Pacific Region. We would look forward to receiving more national teams joining our Tournament in the near future. Same as previous years, we also have three club teams from Australia, Mainland China and Philippines to compete with our Hong Kong Development Team during the Tournament period as well. I am sure all the games in HKIBO Tournament 2017 are "must watch" games to all baseball lovers.
With the above exciting development of the Tournament, we must specially thank for the continuous funding support to the entire tournament from Home Affairs Bureau and Leisure and Cultural Services Department of Hong Kong SAR.
Lastly, I shall specially thank all our umpires, scorers, volunteers, players, coaches, and baseball lovers for making this wonderful tournament actualised.
Let us all enjoy the games.
Dr. Felix Yip
Chairman
Hong Kong Baseball Association
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