The Wide World of Sports

In 1994, the World Cup came to the United States and my understanding of sport changed forever. Though I wasn’t so lucky, friends of mine attended games at the Meadowlands, the Italian squad held their training camp at a private school in New Jersey and I watched a tape-delayed final at a summer camp in New Hampshire, falling to the floor in agony as Baggio sent his spot-kick over the cross bar sending Romario and his Brazilian teammates into ecstasy. Sport for me became a real world event and my love affair for calcio began.

My passion for sport has only grown since my day as a kid and along with my world travels, its allowed me to enjoy much more global take on the world’s sporting situation. This has led me down many roads, including the unenviable task of trying to both a) understand and b) enjoy watching cricket (which they are desperately trying to make more palatable to the common viewer; they’ve chopped down 5-day test matches all the way down to 3-hour 20/20 matches. Hey, it’s a start.). But its learning cricket that has made my Indian experiences much richer and if you can name the Indian captain (MS Dhoni) to almost any Indian man, he will reward you with a smile of delight and a cup of chai.

But Taiwan’s sporting scene is much different from the pluralistic sports scene of America, or the ironic monotheism of cricket in India. Taiwan breaks down into a few top draw events: basketball, badminton and baseball. In this you can see the influence of the United States on the island, which is actually fairly obvious to a visitor’s eyes.

In the cities, basketball dominates – as it does in the States. It’s more suited for the urban landscape in terms of equipment and size of field. One can take a walk through any city in Taiwan and see the boys knocking down threes in baggy shorts and sleeveless shirts.

But with a large countryside of rice paddy, there is a huge affection for the more pastoral transpirings of a baseball game. In fact, one of Taiwan’s biggest exports is Wang Ching-Mien who starts for the New York Yankees (and to my own personal distaste, makes this place overwhelmingly pro-Empire). While Taiwan’s domestic game has suffered recently because of a gambling scandal, many Taiwanese play overseas (two, in fact are in the Red Sox farm system). It’s all to say that baseball matters here and my visit just happens to correspond with a little known but increasingly significant sporting event: the World Baseball Classic.

When they kicked off the inaugural classic in 2006, I half-loved and half-laughed at the idea. In theory, it’s a great idea. Baseball is an international sport with much of the Major Leagues filled up with imported talent from Latin America and the Far East. It’s no secret that the Sox have signed talent from Japan as much if not more for marketing than talent. In fact, almost every major league team has a substantial investment in the Caribbean where they have development houses for youth that resemble similar set-ups for the big European soccer outfits (NYT Magazine did an excellent article on the NY Mets globalization strategy in 2005). At the same time, the tournament hasn’t been able to gain all the world-class stars it would desire (who are prepping for the games that actually pay $$) and some team are downright pitiful (what is South Africa doing in the tournament? Really…?**)

But regardless of its feeling to me, its good here. With a history of back and forth over lands and political displays, this makes for really good east-Asian rivalries. And with baseball being a pre-dominant sport in Korea and Japan as well, this part of the tournament burns with some intensity.

But what I did not expect was that it would have a pull here in the way that the World Cup might have in other places in the world. At the moment, I’m sitting in a chilled out café in Tainan that looks like it would never even welcome a sports fan, but sure enough, they’ve circled several couches around a projector screen so patrons can look up and get the latest on the Taiwan-China game that’s underway. Last night I tuned in to watch Korea-Taiwan with my friend from Seoul.

Taiwan won’t make it out of the first round. Korea and Japan will dominate and represent Asia in the next round of the tournament. But its good to see this kind of competition emerging and to see what it looks like in another country. Last night I took a break from my bike ride across town to tune and watch the second inning of the Korea game with about 75 other people who were watching a big projection screen outside a Sony store downtown. Sure, its not Circo Massimo after Italy took the 2006 World Cup, but I think we’ll be hearing more about this event in years to come.

**For those interested in upsets, The Netherlands twice beat the Dominican Republic in the past week. It’s an impossible result. And it happened twice. Will be following this more closely than I originally thought.