A letter to Williamsport, Chinese Taipei players

Dear Teens,

Today is a day that you should be very proud. My friends and I sat in a top-floor apartment, overseeing the harbor, and watch you played with the Mexico team. It is very funny; our friend is a Mexican.

It was a very exciting game. We planned on going to Williamsport and cheer, but our car doesn't allow us to travel such a long distance.

We saw every movements over the television, the emotions, the joy, the determinations. The days and hours you spent practicing are paying off. Today, at Williamsport.

The world is big. You came to Williamsport, which is a tiny town in Pennsylvania. You had flew over 15 hours to get here; travelled across an ocean and a great piece of land (mountains and deserts). Before, the world perhaps is on the map; today, you are stepping on it. With pride, with joy, with determinations.

The world is beyond one sport; and a sport career has more than one season. Today, an athlete integrates knowledge and skills. To be excellent is not just pitch and bat and run and stretch; it is an integration of knowledge and skills, of language, physics, math, chemistry, history and so on. And so, I encourage you all to do well at school. Attend class with attentions and do well in exams. Perhaps you are not doing very well right now, but that doesn't mean you won't do well on the next exam or next year. But if you give up now, your academics will be poor for the rest of your life.

You love baseball, you want your career to last. That is fantastic. But remember, just as machines can work for so many years, a car can only be driven so many kilometers, your body can take only "so many trainings". Don't over use your body at a young age. Make your career last. Make baseball part of your life (if you want to), and not a year or three years of your life.

Today, you are a page in history. Your history, Taiwan's history. You are our nation's pride. This is why you have to understand that, by being out here, you are greater and braver than many other people; you are the champions, winning or losing.

Today, you got yourself some fans from Baltimore, Maryland.

Best luck to you all.