My Life as Adoga

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 first and second rules of Fight Club ought to be applied to having knee replacement surgery: “You DO NOT talk about knee replacement surgery. With anybody .” Failure to follow the rules will result in confusion. Dangerous, tremendous confusion . That is especially true if you are an American expat living in Taiwan with contacts in both nations who have undergone the surgical procedure and are eager to talk about it. Add to that the ubiquity of YouTube videos from therapists and patients alike, and you have a child’s recipe for muddle pies. You see … The adventure that is a full knee replacement begins many years before the surgery itself. It starts with the grudging admission that a knee, or both knees, have completely lost their youthful vigor. I’m talking about that time when walking a mere 4,000 steps — what was once a friendly half-hour stroll — becomes a two-hour trudge through discomfort. The feet get blamed, and they step forward to point a finger — er, a toe — ...

A good book is a work of amazing depth. Perhaps that should be the qualification that defines "classic" literature? In 2016 the popular magazine Taiwan Panorama published an article about the Eslite Bookstore's "Reading Classics Together" project. The heart of that story was a survey of participating publishers' definitions of what a "classic" text was and the factors they considered when choosing books from their catalogues for the project. In a second article , the magazine intereviewed writers and scholars about their understanding of what characteristics define a "classic" work of literature. That report considers "the expert reader" and questions of what raises a text to the status of "classic" despite changes in the social environment of readers. Among those characteristics most valued by the scholars and writers of Taiwan who were interviewed for the "Classic Works: Reading Together, Thinking Together...

Late in April (2025) I had my first experience of attending a baseball game in Taiwan in a stadium — at the glamorous Taipei Dome, no less. It was a matchup between two of Taiwan’s strongest professional baseball clubs: the Wei Chuan Dragons and the Chinatrust Brothers. It has already been some five days out from that event, but I still feel awed by the encounter. This was actually only the second time in my life I have ever attended a stadium game. My first took place when I was maybe 10 years old and my best friend’s dad took me along with their family to see a game at the now-demolished Shea Stadium. That one time was enough to make me a lifelong fan of the New York Mets. But baseball fandom is a variant expression of love, and love adopts many forms that embrace different people differently. And thanks to the friend who gifted me the ticket to last week’s game in Taipei, I am now a dedicated fan of yet another team. Well, two other teams. OK, maybe three other teams in addition...