When Wang Wei-chen had a base hit for the CTBC Brothers, no one booed or cheered from the stands at the Sinjhuang Baseball Stadium in New Taipei City, no one hurled insults at the umpires, and no one yelled the Chinese-language line of encouragement “add oil” to either team.
The 12,150 blue plastic seats on Friday night were devoid of fans for the game between the CTBC Brothers and the Fubon Guardians, down from the average crowd of 6,000 at local professional baseball games. No fans have come to any local games since play started on April 11.
The five-team CPBL is barring spectators over concerns of spreading COVID-19 in a crowded space, but the league decided it was safe to let in players, coaches, cheerleaders, costumed mascots, mask-wearing batboys and the media, as the nation has relatively few cases of the coronavirus.
Photo: Chiang Ying-ying, AP
“We’d like to have fans coming into the stadium to cheer us on, yet due to the outbreak, they can’t,” said Wang, an infielder for the Brothers. “We are still lucky, since we have not stopped our season and people can still see us in this way.”
Other baseball leagues around the world have been postponed to next month or later. Beyond baseball, organized sports worldwide have canceled or delayed competition. The Tokyo Olympic Games have been pushed back a year.
At the ballpark, about 150 placards were placed upright on the seats. They wished luck to particular players from the Guardians home team, some with cut-out effigies, and thanked the nation’s medical personnel for keeping coronavirus caseloads low.
Rock ‘n’ roll sounds blasted out of the bleachers as if in a normal game and players did some cheering for their teammates to replace the din of fans.
“I think it feels like a real game,” said Mac Huang, a longtime baseball fan and middle-school teacher in Taipei who follows the league online.
Games with no fans are “a good way to stop the coronavirus, but no one knows when the pandemic will stop — and it’s good to have the games on anyway,” he said.
League officials delayed the season twice from its originally scheduled opening day on March 14, and only started competition after close consultation with the Ministry of Health and Welfare.
They are ready to allow all 240 regular games in empty parks through the season’s end in the middle of November, if needed.
“We have to be grateful to Taiwan’s citizens for keeping the outbreak under control and letting us do this,” league commissioner Wu Chih-yang said.
To keep fans watching on their smartphones, PCs and TVs, the league is encouraging teams to give their stadiums a realistic, lively feel. That is where the placards and cheerleaders come in.
Online game commentary is being broadcast in English as well as Chinese this year, in case fans overseas want to watch a live season.
“Because there is so much room up there in the stands, it leaves space for creativity and each team can be creative as it wishes,” the commissioner said.
Teams are still making some money from broadcast games, as the league charges a subscription fee for online viewers, he added.
In Taoyuan, the unbeaten Rakuten Monkeys are charming fans by placing 40 mannequins in the stands — to be sent to local stores once their duties are done — and stadium seats support LED-lit display boards that twinkle with slogans to inspire base hits and home runs.
“The fact that we’re playing in front of empty seats, that’s fine. We’re still playing the game, getting the opportunity to come out here and play,” said Rob Ducey, a former Major League outfielder who is a hitting coach for the Guardians.
TITLE CAMPAIGN: The victory sent the Monkeys to the Taiwan Series for the third time in the past four seasons as they seek their first championship since 2019 The stage is set for the Taiwan Series after the Rakuten Monkeys on Monday beat the Uni-President Lions 4-3 in Game 5 of the CPBL Challenger Series in Kaohsiung. The Monkeys, who entered the top of the ninth scoreless, tied the game with a three-run blast by Lin Chih-ping and scored the winning run in the 10th on an RBI single by Lin Li, a three-time batting champion in the CPBL. Both players entered the game as pinch hitters. “The coach told me to stay prepared as a pinch hitter in the later part of the game. My teammates had
Taiwanese badminton ace Chou Tien-chen was crowned the men’s singles champion at the Arctic Open on Sunday, after defeating Kunlavut Vitidsarn of Thailand 21-11, 13-21, 21-19. The 35-year-old Chou, who is ranked world No. 5, and the 24-year-old Vitidsarn, ranked world No. 3, battled it out for one hour and 17 minutes in a grueling three-game match at Energia Areena in Vantaa, Finland. In the first game, Chou took an early 9-7 lead and maintained his momentum, widening the gap, before defeating Vitidsarn 21-11. At the start of the second game, the two players were neck-and-neck. When Vitidsarn pulled ahead
The Ministry of Sports on Wednesday night called for the Chinese Taipei Football Association (CTFA) to address issues in Taiwanese soccer after national manager Huang Che-ming on Tuesday resigned following Taiwan’s elimination in AFC Asian Cup qualifiers. Taiwan on Tuesday were thrashed 6-1 by Thailand in their Group D tie at Taipei Municipal Stadium. Taiwan finished with no points, after losing all four of their matches, eliminating them from qualifying for the 2027 AFC Asian Cup. Huang made his surprise resignation at a post-match news conference, following three losses since he took over the team from English coach Gary White in August. Huang
HIT AND RUN: Toronto manager John Schneider got his wish that his team ‘find some slug in the air out here,’ as the Blue Jays combined to total 611m of homers Tired in Toronto, the Blue Jays slugged in Seattle. Vladimir Guerrero Jr and George Springer on Wednesday woke up the Jays, as Toronto hit five home runs to rebound from an early deficit, routing the Mariners 13-4 and closing to 2-1 in the American League Championship Series (ALCS). Toronto had 18 hits — all within the first three pitches of each at-bat. “If they give us a first pitch, the pitch that we’re looking for, we’re going to attack and we’re going to be aggressive,” Guerrero said. Seattle starter George Kirby gave up eight of the hits. “I wasn’t really executing when they got