為什麼原住民會去追求職棒選手這種生涯短暫的工作？本文分析原住民取得職棒工作的前置訓練過程和運動機會結構的流動歷程。針對台東原住民基層球隊進行九個月的參與觀察，訪談76位報導人，分析球員訓練日記，檢視球員的訓練軌跡、運動社會化、競賽遊戲與文化、意識形態的監管機制，勾繪原住民為何樂於擁抱隱形產出和不確定報酬的棒球訓練，從而打造自我剝削和規訓的苦練意識。研究發現原住民落入變形化的受教處境，在追求績效和競爭求存的過程中，球場不僅是運動專業化的所在，更是球員經歷、回應、抵抗甚至肯認階序意識的競技場。此外，在地位取得更呈現兩種分殊樣貌—邁向專業化之路、受限的替代出路。成功案例晉身職棒，塑造社會流動的開放假象，造就原住民運動成就的自我認同與社會形象，更遭逢短暫職涯和離職之困。效忠訓練體制的規則，對敗退者亦發揮社會控制的力量，模塑其自我說服的心理機轉，提供社會不平等現狀的解釋正當性。直言之，原住民球員的社會流動機會被綁縛在訓練體制所形塑的階序意識、運動升遷空缺鏈和短暫職涯的風險中。打棒球造成原住民在教育和謀職選擇的類聚趨勢與社會堆疊效果，更建構出原住民競爭有限空缺的淘汰鏈。

Why do the indigenous peoples aspire to become professional baseball players? a career that is so short? This study explores the disciplinary process and the social mobility through the sport opportunity structure that indigenous adolescents must undergo beginning professional careers. Through nine months of ethnographic observation, this study observed the indigenous players' regular training processes and competitions. These observations were also accompanied with the players' training diaries and in-depth interviews with 76 informants. By examining the space-time trajectories and sport socialization in their training process, as well as examining disciplinary process, athletic games and culture, and surveillance mechanisms regarding their mental and ideological states, the reasons why they enthusiastically embrace the intangible output and uncertain reward of baseball training and why they consciously cultivate a sense of self-exploitation and hard practice can be discovered. The following conclusions were obtained: Indigenous baseball players have come up through an nonstandard educational situation and therefore possess a ”survival of the fittest” mentality. Under this formation of their dispositions and through competing for survival, the baseball field is not simply a place that these indigenous players learn athletic socialization and professionalism. It also becomes an arena where these athletes experience, react to, resist and recognize conventional hierarchical consciousness. Moreover, the indigenous players show characteristics of social mobility differentiation-pursuing the professional baseball career, but with limited alternative opportunities. The comparatively higher ratio of successful cases of indigenous players advancing to professional baseball careers represents the false illusions of the social mobility attainable through this sport, and produces a sport where indigenous peoples find self-identity and where a social image about indigenous sport achievement is presented, while enhancing social control on the unsuccessful cases and providing them with the justification and mental rationalization of the idea of social inequality. In a nutshell, the social mobility of indigenous players are limited by the hierarchical consciousness resulting from the disciplinary regime, the opportunities available in the chain of advancement in the sport, and the risk of a short-period professional career. Besides creating an occupational homogeneity of ethnic trend and social stacking effects amongst indigenous peoples in regard to their educational choices and occupational attainment, playing baseball also becomes a chain of survival or elimination-for indigenous peoples as they compete with each other for limited opportunities.