Every global competition is a big deal for Taiwan, an island democracy forever facing existential crises. And so it was that Taiwan’s ability to put forward a national team for the 2026 World Baseball Classic meant more than just playing a game. The tournament was, for Taiwan, bigger than merely winning and losing. Each runner on Taiwan’s national team who made his way to homebase was playing against a global political order that would rather see the island democracy and its 23 million people vanish into irrelevance. Just being on the field is already a achievement, but making a good showing while up at bat is an astounding success. On such an uneven field it might seem easier to leave the game and let the ball fall where it will, accepting whatever the umpire of empire decides. But that’s not playing to win, and if the history of baseball says anything, Taiwan has always been in the game to win. Sure, some could scoff that this is “reading too much” into what is for all the nati...
The sometimes lunatic and often unreasonable rants of an American "big nose" living in Taiwan.