The summer vacation draws near. Students everywhere battle through tests of every description, but their attention is likely wandering off to fierce sports contests going on elsewhere. In the NBA finals, the star-studded Los Angeles Lakers fall in a stunning upset to the Detroit Pistons and their airtight defense. The fabulous duo of Shaquille O'Neill and Kobe Bryant will soon be history, to the dismay of many a fan. Across the Atlantic, meanwhile, the European Cup has got the continent in a football frenzy, with employees skipping work just to get a glimpse of David Beckham and Zinedine Zidane going head-to-head in the match between Britain and France. And how many tennis buffs will be glued to their TV sets in the middle of the night to watch Wimbledon?
In Taiwan baseball, the pro league is now in its 15th season. The heavy-hitting Brother Elephants surprisingly failed to make it to the championship series, which was eventually won by the Uni-President Lions. Two years ago in the Asian Games, Taiwan's national team thrilled fans with a narrow victory over South Korea that still lingers fresh in memory. The national team will have a chance to strut its stuff again in August at the Athens Olympics.
Baseball was first introduced to Taiwan a century ago by the Japanese. Taiwanese teams rose to international prominence in the 1970s and became a great source of pride. Today, baseball is Taiwan's only professional sport in strong financial condition, and wears the title of "Taiwan's national sport" with aplomb.
But even though baseball is our national sport, the average junior and senior high schooler can't necessarily play it, for few have ever swung a bat. And small wonder, as playing baseball is forbidden at most schools for the simple reason that the playgrounds are too small. Flying baseballs would end up hurting people and breaking windows. If you made the rounds of all the parks in Taiwan, you would find precious few people playing baseball. It's not actually much of a participant sport here in Taiwan.
Fortunately, however, Taiwan has a strong baseball tradition and several schools for training baseball players. This system keeps the popularity of baseball from flagging. So how do people become baseball fans as adults if they've never played the sport? And why are they willing to shell out cash to attend games? It's all a matter of sports marketing, a form of wizardry that turns ball parks into theater and ball players into celebrities.
Speaking of sports marketing, retired NBA star Michael Jordan recently ruffled feathers in Taiwan in a whirlwind stopover, ducking out of sight after a quick 90-second appearance before fans who had waited three hours to see him. High-flying Taiwan Nike eventually had to make a public apology for the fiasco. The company had thought to score a marketing coup on the strength of Jordan's huge appeal, but the incident only proved that fans can put you on a pedestal, and fans can pull you back off it.
But in any case, Nike's classy ads featuring Jordan never fail to make a deep impression on anyone who sees them. No Nike product is actually in sight. There is only Jordan talking about his feelings when playing the game he loves. Nike humbly places its product at Jordan's feet, which plays well with consumers. In contrast, our local firms make their athlete spokespersons look like two-bit street hawkers, but products marketed this way do not necessarily benefit from the athlete's popularity. Indeed, such ads serve only to tarnish the athlete's professional image. It would seem that we have a lot to learn about the art of sports marketing.
Amidst the cheers and applause of a sports contest, talented players give their all in a fierce struggle where luck has much to do with the final outcome. But once the uniforms come off and the stadium is left behind, stars are just regular folks like you and me, experiencing all the joys and pain of life, often struggling with even greater frustration than the rest of us. Unlike most media, which focus on the superstars and never tire of gossiping about players' private lives, Sinorama has chosen to tell the tale of "bear cub" Wu Ssu-you. We feel sure that many of our readers will find the story quite moving.
In this hot, sunny sports season, Sinorama dispatched two "aces" of its own-senior reporter Vito Lee, a 180-cm star athlete in his own right, and photographer Chuang Kung-ju-to cover baseball games all across Taiwan. The fruit of their travails is our feature article, "Back to the Diamond." In addition, special correspondent Kuo Li-chuan has trekked to the meteorological station atop the rugged north peak of Yushan, and writes about her findings in "Modern Primitives." Interest in Yushan has become something of a fashion lately, so we hope our readers will enjoy the fresh perspective of this article.
