Baseball teams at Asian Games fight harder over laundry than on the field

Baseball teams competing at the 2026 Aichi-Nagoya Asian Games have been waging a battle over uniform laundry that rivals the intensity of their on-field competition.

Amid a string of organizational problems at this year's Asian Games — including issues with accommodations, transportation and training facilities — baseball teams have struggled with inadequate laundry service.

According to a South Korean team official, all baseball teams are staying together at a hotel in downtown Nagoya. The hotel offers a laundry service, but the turnaround takes several days, leaving players who need clean uniforms every day in a difficult position.

Players from various countries have resorted to using the hotel's small number of coin-operated washing machines themselves, with competition so fierce that athletes have been lining up before dawn to claim a spot.

Taiwan team captain Chen Min-tzu said Monday that after finishing a game late the night before and arriving at the hotel, he still had to do his own laundry in the coin machines. "By the time I finished, it was 3 or 4 a.m., but I had to be up around 6 or 7 a.m. for Wednesday's afternoon game," he said. "I basically got almost no sleep."

Ultimately, teams have been seeking out outside laundry services at their own expense.

Taiwan's China Times reported Wednesday that the Chinese Taipei Baseball Association had finally found an outside laundry service, allowing the team to have its uniforms cleaned without players having to do it themselves in the middle of the night.

The paper added that South Korea, Japan and China had each contracted with separate laundry providers, and predicted that the sight of athletes from multiple countries queuing in front of the hotel's coin machines would soon be a thing of the past.

The Korea Baseball Organization confirmed it had arranged an outside contractor for the South Korean team. A KBO official said Wednesday, when the laundry issue came to light, that the organization had resolved the problem early by finding a service provider ahead of time.

However, some teams — including Palestine — whose national federations have provided limited support are still handling laundry on their own.