Playing In Isolation is an adapted version of a PhD thesis by a Taiwanese scholar, former amateur baseball player, and present professor at the National Taiwan University of Physical Education and Sport. Much of the book deals with amateur baseball - a professional league debuting on the island only in the 1990s - and more specifically the role of government in sport. As one of the first book-length texts on the subject in English, readers might expect a somewhat hagiographic account, but there is no cause for concern. Yu is unafraid to examine the negative effects of policy and in his introduction laments the unwanted government attention his research attracted. For non-specialists, Yu does an adequate job providing the background necessary to follow his largely chronological account. The latter half of the book seems to offer a number of threads that aren’t woven into a larger story, a problem not uncommon for historians working on events contemporaneous to their own lives. The writing is workmanlike, aimed at a general audience, and could have benefited from a stronger editor.
The story features two protagonists who arrive from outside, fifty years apart, and find ways to use baseball to suit their political ambitions. The first to arrive, and to introduce the game, were the Japanese, who occupied Taiwan for half a decade from 1895 to 1945. Baseball was initially limited to play by Japanese teams, but a series of events in the late teens - a rebellion in Japan-occupied Korea and political liberalization in Japan - led to efforts by the occupation government to culturally assimilate Taiwanese into the Japanese empire. This was done in part through expanded educational opportunities for Taiwanese, who were introduced to baseball through the national school curriculum. Teams and tournaments soon flourished, with the aboriginal population demonstrating deft ability to thrash their colonial masters at their own game. Some of these teams travelled to Japan to compete in exhibitions and national high school tournaments (see the film Kano), and a few Taiwanese joined Japan’s professional league.
Shortly after the end of WWII, new rulers arrived, this time the Kuomintang, mainland Chinese fleeing Mao’s Communist revolution. These former soldiers had fought a long, hard war against Japanese occupation and were in no mood to tolerate anything having to do with the former enemy. The education system was purged of Japanese materials and the use of Japanese and aboriginal languages was banned. Baseball was not prohibited, but neither was it encouraged nor promoted. For reasons Yu doesn’t make clear, the new regime was more interested in basketball and football.
Yu argues these two sports were more popular in post-war Taiwan for largely negative reasons: baseball rules are more difficult, the game requires additional equipment and takes more time. If perhaps a committee met to decide which sports to promote based on available resources and its ability to disseminate them as quickly as possible, this might make some sense. But it seems the mainlanders arrived with their preferences in situ, so any reason is likely to be little more than justification. My suspicion is that they viewed baseball as something played by Japanese and aboriginals and not worthy of Chinese. “In short,” Yu observes, “there was an unwritten law that the mainlanders should play basketball, and the Taiwanese should play baseball.”
What ensued was a 20 year period of benign neglect, a Golden Era of amateur baseball, in which civic groups could form teams and leagues free from government interest or interference. Baseball remained popular among Taiwanese, many of who grew up playing the game during Japan’s occupation, and for whom the game was one of the few places where they could use Japanese or aboriginal languages, then prohibited in education, government, and commerce.
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| Hongye team ca.1968-69 |
So huge, in fact, that things quickly got out of hand, with seemingly every school in every corner of the island vying to put together a tournament level team. The island-wide baseball association was so enthusiastic that they signed on to international Little League Baseball, in which they subsequently won the World Series in their first appearance in 1969, and nine more Series over the next 12 years.
The international recognition generated by these victories was valuable to Taiwanese politicians, who saw their country being shunted off the international stage as a result of Communist China’s forceful diplomacy, as well as US efforts to bring mainland China into the community of nations. The Taiwan government was so eager to exploit every opportunity to promote Taiwan that in one of many ironies, what was once a game considered beneath mainland nationalists was now appropriated as one of _their_ achievments. The sword cut both ways, though, and to gain control of baseball the transplanted nationalists were required to learn the language of the game, derived largely from Japanese and indigenous Taiwanese languages.
A further and perhaps less obvious irony was that the prestige afforded by baseball challenged deep cultural traditions by contravening an ingrained prejudice toward physical activity. Yu traces this to Confucian roots and China’s history of civil service examinations, the latter dating back to as early as the beginnings of the Current Era. In essence, Chinese parents saw sport as something interfering with their children’s academic lives and future careers. Until, that is, it became a source of national pride and profit.
Yu goes on to describe numerous ways in which the game was subsequently corrupted to meet political ends, including the flouting of Little League Baseball rules on player eligibility - such as age restrictions and a requirement that teams be recruited from local communities. In fact, the Taiwanese were building island-wide all-star teams featuring over-age players. Success in the Series resulted in financial reward for many connected with the game, and brought greater pressure to produce yet another winning team (and more opportunities for loot) for the following year. Ironically, success ruined baseball for many young people, who now felt compelled to win at any cost and who suffered practice regimens resembling military boot camp (which appear, actually, to be fairly common to Japan even today). Star players were typically overused and often suffered physical and mental disabilities at the end of their baseball careers. Because players were routinely given a free rein to practice exclusively, many “graduated” with little academic knowledge or abilities. (I note a fairly recent article that denies any of this happened. If interested, I would suggest reading Yu’s account, which includes documented cases of age fixing, illegal recruitment, and burned out minds and bodies.) The Taiwanese eventually left the LLB in 1997. According to Yu’s account, when they returned in 2003, they fairly much picked up where they left off, both in terms of winning and in flouting LLB regulations.
The early 90s saw the introduction of Taiwan’s first professional association, the Chinese Professional Baseball League (CPBL). Comprised of four teams with no local fan bases, “the pro clubs were like circus bands touring the island and playing in five ballparks.” In the mid-90s a Taiwanese entrepreneur purchased the rights to broadcast pro games on his new all-sports cable channel. Seeing the profit potential from his success, two years later the CPBL offered the contract to a competitor for a higher bid. The jilted and incensed cable channel owner subsequently started his own pro league, the TML, or Taiwan Major League. The rivalry between the organizations was long lasting and bitter. They poached players from one another and treated them so perniciously that more than a few players looked to gambling to supplement incomes. (Yu includes lists running to four pages in two appendices of suspected and convicted players.) Association with the mafia led to opportunities for match fixing, with gangsters seeking to motivate players with threats - and actual incidents - of violence. When at last all was revealed, the CPBL lost two clubs in 1999 and nearly collapsed.
That same year marked the globalization of the baseball labor market in Taiwan with the signing by the Los Angeles Dodgers of Chen Jinfeng, the first Taiwanese to play in the MLB. Taiwanese had previously played in Japan, but Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB) could not offer the same level of financial resources and international prestige. Yu believes MLB labor practices to be predatory and not especially welcome in Taiwan, citing as example the signing of a 16-year old high school student, a practice forbidden to the MLB in its home market of the USA. Seeing the writing on the wall, the NPB unilaterally revoked a non-poaching agreement with the Taiwan leagues.
Largely as a result of the 2001 World Cup, hosted by Taiwan, the rivalry between the two pro leagues finally ended six years after it had begun. While the Cup was a financial loss and the national team managed only a bronze, 15 of the team’s players came from the CPBL. At the start of the next pro season, it was clear from attendance figures where fan interest lied and in 2003 the two leagues merged. (The CPBL is still active of this writing, consisting of four teams playing a 120 game schedule.)
Taiwanese continued their back and forth love affair with amateur ball. When the government was generous and promoted play and the formation of community youth teams, and when national teams were winning international tournaments, the public responded. When the government needed to cut back, funds ran dry, and international competition was not possible, many teams folded and the amatuer leagues contracted. Yu concludes that the biggest impediment to the development of Taiwanese baseball is funding and the academics-at-all-cost mindset of parents. Even when the government in the early 00s tried to reform the education system to include non-academic subjects as required elements of the curriculum, such as arts and sports, “parents follow[ed] the old thinking by putting their children into cram schools for these extracurricular activities in order for them to enter the university successfully.” Yu also sees international competition as more bane than boon, as Taiwanese repeatedly emphasize winning over health, enjoyment, and socialization.
The book ends rather bleakly with Yu proclaiming the demise of Taiwanese ball, which he describes as in “continuous decline” and “heading for a dead end.” Eight years after publication, the pro league remains active, a number of players are regulars in the NPB and MLB, and Taiwan is still participating in international Little League, making it in 2016 to the Asia-Pacific finals. While it seems Yu may have overstated his case, his historical account of the development of Taiwanese baseball remains a welcome addition to international baseball scholarship.
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