Speaker
Description
This study focuses on the development of baseball in Taiwan from 1950 to 1989 and discusses how Taiwanese baseball was gradually disconnected from local communities during the period from the perspective of historical sociology.
Under Japanese rule, baseball had been a popular sport in Taiwan. Although Japanese—the main ballplayers—were repatriated after World War II, Taiwanese people continued playing baseball in local communities, and became the protagonists of the fields. However, after the retreat to Taiwan in December 1949, the Kuomintang government (KMT) implemented a series of political and economic policies which greatly changed the social conditions in Taiwan, including the social image of baseball.
This study argues that there were two major shifts away from baseball in Taiwan during 1950-1989. The first shift occurred from the 1950s to the mid-1960s because of insufficient educational capacity and the KMT’s marginalization of baseball. The second shift occurred from the mid-1970s to the 1980s. The huge success in Little League World Series in the 1970s perfectly exemplifies how baseball was hijacked and utilized as a prop by the KMT to demonstrate their legitimacy to the international community. Consequently, baseball became a national symbol, and its participants was limited to few elites in pursuit of championship. The analysis shows that the two disruptions reduced the number of people involved in baseball, and gradually decoupled the development of baseball from local communities.
