Baseball, as American as apple pie, is as Taiwanese as pineapple cake. The spread of ideas can take winding paths. From the threat of Commodore Perry’s fleet off the coast of Japan, to the occupation of the Japanese on Taiwan’s shores, continuing with the presence of American soldiers on its land after the Kuomintang's retreat, baseball traveled across the Pacific and into the Taiwanese consciousness. On an isle of emerald mountains, Taiwan is a tapestry of contradiction, at once a memory and a premonition. Weathered shophouses stand stoic against baroque revivals, amid modernist mid-rises shadowed by gleaming skyscrapers, against flashes of cyberpunk along wet night markets. Five days and four nights paired with an international driver license marks the beginning of a journey into the past and present, with stops amongst the tangible and surreal—a curveball of ideals, spanning from west to the east.

Taipei, Chiayi City