At a time when China endeavors to isolate Taiwan diplomatically, baseball remains one of the island’s potent instruments of soft power and a path to international recognition. When the sport debuted in the Olympics in Barcelona in 1992, Taiwan won the silver medal, losing the championship game to another small, baseball-crazed island, Cuba.

“Brazil has football,” said Shih Fu-dao, a taxi driver, as he drove a colleague and me to another game, this time in Tainan, in southern Taiwan. “Taiwan has baseball.”

Quoting taxi drivers is a journalistic cliché that is best avoided, but Mr. Shih knew whereof he spoke. His son, Hsiang-kai, played professionally here for four seasons, from 2004 to 2008.

For all its obvious connections to the American pastime, baseball is not an American import. It came through Japan, where baseball had already been played for a quarter century when the Japanese seized Taiwan in 1895. At the time, Taiwan was controlled by the Qing-era rulers of China.

Andrew D. Morris, a contributing writer to “Baseball Beyond Our Borders: An International Pastime,” wrote that the Japanese legacy shapes the game to this day, one more thing that distinguishes Taiwan’s identity from China’s.

After the forces of Chiang Kai-shek retreated to Taiwan and established the Republic of China following the Communist Revolution in 1949, the new government sought to erase the vestiges of Japanese rule, except for baseball.

The game’s history since then has been as turbulent as the island’s transition to democracy.

The Chinese Professional Baseball League — its very name a reflection of Taiwan’s complicated history with China — formed only in 1990, after a long era of martial law that ended in 1987.