Many people's memories of baseball are refreshed when they are around the intersection of Tunhua North Road and Nanking East Road, where the Taipei Baseball Park used to be. The stadium meant a lot even to those who are not hardcore baseball fans, as it is part of the shared memories of the baseball craze in the 1970s and 1980s.
Soon, in place of the stadium there will be a small dome -- a "multi-functional" stadium. But none of the functions includes hosting baseball games. So where is the dome in which we can have a baseball game? Nobody knows.
The dome project is an interesting case of public policy-making. In the early 1990s when people were crazy about professional baseball, building a dome seemed to be a certainty. It seemed to be an unmistakable reality that with no domes, professional baseball in this country would be doomed. But the reality is that the only reason Taiwan needs to build a dome is because it rains a lot here. However, global warming and drastic climate changes in recent years has made this rationale outdated.
A well-known pitcher who had played in Japan was once invited to provide commentary on a live baseball game. Asked for his opinion on an indoor stadium, the veteran said that he preferred playing outdoors. He thought it was boring to play indoors, where he saw no seasonal changes or daylight. An awkward silence ensued on the show, because building a dome had been an unchallengeable vision.
The US professional baseball league is more than 100 years old. But how many American cities have domes? Hundred-year-old outdoor ballparks in Boston and Chicago hold the memories of generations of Americans. Do they have to be changed to indoor ones too? Taiwan's problem is that it doesn't have a good baseball park, not that it doesn't have a dome. So why not transform the site of Taipei's old baseball park into a good outdoor ballpark?
Many other public policies in Taiwan often get confused. Politicians and interest groups simply want grand projects to win them both fame and money. But these projects may not be realizable. Meanwhile, they turn a blind eye to relatively small but manageable projects that cost less.
Does Taichung really need a branch of the Guggenheim Museum? Many provincial museums are still in a mess, so how can we be confident that we'll be able to manage a world-class museum? Besides, Taichung has one of the best museums of natural sciences. Why don't we develop projects to make it better?
The Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts, with its first-class exhibition layout, claims that it will make its outdoor space similar to that of Hakone Art Museum in Japan. I wonder how many good art pieces it has collected so far though? Every place in Taiwan wants a local airport, yet has it ever occurred to people that with less money, we can create a more effective transportation network simply by connecting highways and high-speed railways?
The Taiwan Railway Administration (TRA) is an even sadder case. Its employees blame its problems on Taiwan High Speed Railway Co. But if you have taken a Japan Rail train or an AMTRAK train in the US, you know that the TRA's fundamental problem has nothing to do with the high-speed rail project. It's TRA's service that stinks. Anyone who has tried its ticketing system knows how user-unfriendly it is.
Nobody will spend time to review the projects that do not take much money but a lot of effort to improve. Politicians know that these projects won't make them famous or conglomerates big money.
Taiwan has not been making progress but is spinning around empty issues and wasting its resources. A key reason for this phenomenon is that from top down, everyone is dreaming of being the world's No. 1.
Ku Er-teh is a freelance writer.
TRANSLATED BY JENNIE SHIH
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