Taiwan: What can a baseball do? · Global Voices
There are some Taiwanese playing in Major League Baseball: <PERSON> in Dodgers from 2002-2005, <PERSON> in Dodgers, <PERSON> in Dodgers, <PERSON> in Royals, and <PERSON> in Yankees. Although they are loved by Taiwanese, these baseball stars are not the focus of this article. Here are stories about how baseballs change the life of challenged people and students in remote elementary schools.
Photo courtesy of Haomei.
The first story starts when a screen writer, an actor, and a director, <PERSON> left a message in <PERSON>'s blog about the Sacred Heart Home for the challenged people. Fr. <PERSON> founded the Sacred Heart Home in Chia-Yi, Taiwan, in 1980, and he planned to build a larger building to help more challenged people. Although the Reverend <PERSON>, a recipient of presidential and papal honors for his services to Taiwan over almost half a century, died in 2002, his colleagues keep working on this project. 871
Due to the funding shortage, <PERSON> started to blog about the Sacred Heart Home and helps raise money and invite people to visit the Sacred Heart Home.
An episode for these fund-raising activities is about baseballs.
<PERSON> talked about how <PERSON> signed baseballs for a fund-raising auction:
我跟郭泰源總教練提到聖心募款的事情，他聽得很仔細，也很豪爽答應簽名[…]我在一旁小心打探，「多簽一些可以嗎？」[…]郭總說，「可以啊，愛心的事情，當然沒問題！」
I mentioned fund-raising for Sacred Heart Home to <PERSON>. He listened carefully and agreed to sign some baseballs without hesitance.[…] I asked him, “can you sign more?” He answered, “sure. For doing good things, there is never a no!.”
This auction raised 182100 NTD for the Sacred Heart Home, and this success inspired some baseball lovers to contribute their baseball-related souvenirs to the second auction. The second auction raised 281861 NTD for the Sacred Heart Home. The result is not only satisfactory for the Sacred Heart Home but also for the baseball players and lovers–
以前只要提到金錢和棒球掛勾，大家都會想到簽賭，沒想到這次金錢跟棒球掛勾，居然成就這麼動人的好事。
In the past, when we talked about how the baseball is related to money, we thought about gambling. However, this time when these baseballs work with money, we have accomplished something so touching.
The second story is about helping some baseball teams in the remote elementary schools. <PERSON> reported:
堅果團購夢想計畫已經募到新台幣72000元。[…]我們也將委請藍文成教練幫忙遴選最需要幫助的球隊，在賽後這段期間，儘快將球具送達學校，給那些有夢想的棒球孩子，充滿溫暖的禮物。 49