Youde Liang

Youde Liang was Vice President of the Baseball Association of the People’s Republic of China and a prolific author of several baseball books, including Major League Baseball Record/Memoir and Junior Baseball Tutorial. During Dodger Spring Training in 1986, Peter O’Malley invited Liang to visit Dodgertown, Vero Beach, Florida along with three Chinese National coaches (Song Ping-Shang from Beijing, Sher Wei-Ji from Shanghai and Tu Ming-Hui from Sichuan). Liang wrote extensively about that experience in his Major League Baseball Record/Memoir book. Liang’s father, Fuchu Liang was a profound contributor to the development of baseball in China. He was head coach of the Shanghai Panda Baseball team. He toured middle schools and universities in an effort to instruct baseball and he published baseball and softball guides at his own expense. Youde played for his father’s Shanghai baseball team as a second baseman in 1947. Both shared a passion for the game.

Liang also visited Dodger Stadium on May 19, 1993, on the occasion of the first Dodger regular season broadcast in Mandarin Chinese. Liang was a guest of Peter’s in the Chairman’s Box and watched the game together. It was the first time a Major League Baseball regular season game was broadcast in four languages, as the game was heard in English, Spanish, Korean and Mandarin Chinese.