"Play Ball!" in Taichung

Friday Jul 1, 2016 6:35 PM Rhinos at Brothers Taichung –

      This was the next local professional Taiwan baseball game in Taichung. I could ride my bike and be there in twenty minutes. I would probably have to go alone since no one I knew was interested in baseball. There is a great China Professional Baseball League (CPBL) English website (http://www.cpblenglish.com/?m=0) so I can  follow the players in the league. I have a beautiful scorebook I got at an Eslite clearance sale that I'm dying to use. I will ask my wife's nephews to go with me.

      The boys were very happy to spend the evening with their American uncle. The day of the game came, but it wasn't very good weather. There had been thunder showers all day so I decided to drive the car there instead of riding the bicycle as I had with my son to last year's All-Star game. The Taichung International Baseball Stadium near highway #74 off Chung-De Road is about twenty-five minutes away by bike and fifteen minutes by car.  I picked up my wife's nephews and we were off.

     The parking lot charge was 50 NT- $1.50 but we found a spot on the street outside near the large cement domed building that they painted to look like a baseball. We had to buy tickets so we walked around to the front of the stadium. We got seats in the second row, just behind the catcher, for 350 NT-$12! Wow, what a view! 

     There were plenty of empty seats for the first game of the second half of the season between the Brothers and Rhinos. Mayor Lin of Taichung attended the game. He was sitting right behind us but I didn't know it until my wife's nephew told me a week later. With the cute cheerleaders dancing in place on the dugouts and the line-ups announced, it was time to "Play Ball!"

     I took out the score book and went to work copying the anglicized names of the players in the line-up. I left a space to write their names later in Chinese. For now, it was the game that mattered;I didn't want to miss a pitch. Back in New York, I had seen a few professional games with my children each season until the tickets, parking, and stadium food became so overpriced, I stopped going to games. Then, in Coney Island, not far from my home, the Mets single 'A' affiliate, The Cyclones, started playing in  Keystone Park. It was a pleasure to sit close up at a ball game again. Their stadium was similar to the Taichung Stadium for coziness, convenience, and price, not to mention the caliber of play, though I must say, most players in the Taiwan professional league (I hate to call it "China Professional Baseball League" since baseball isn't so popular in China, and this is Taiwan, yo) are better than American single 'A' players. 

     Things were getting exciting, the PA announcer shouting out the players names, starting chants with the crowd, even during the play, something that doesn't happen in the U.S. It was the bottom of the third. The visiting team, Rhinos, had just scored three more runs to add to the one they had in the second when the rain began to fall, lightly at first. Our seat near the field had no roof over it so we moved back up under cover. That lasted for one out and one walk when the sky opened up and the umpire signaled to get the tarpaulin out to cover the infield. You know what this means? Time for dinner!!!
     

     There is a choice of American and Taiwanese snack foods at the ballpark. There is even a 7-11 on the premises. The nicest thing is that, unlike at American ballparks, they allow you to bring in your own food and beverages. Most of the Taiwanese food is near the ramp outside under tents and inaccessible during a rain delay unless you have an umbrella. In the rotunda, there is a stand for KFC, Pizza Hut, but my beeline for dinner went straight to Jimmy's Hot Dogs! For 110 NT -$3.43, I got the most delicious, grilled dog, substantial bun chili-cheese dog topped with a spoon of minced onion. Lo and behold, they even had Mountain Dew soda, back on the market with a new formula from a Taiwan distributor after the American version was pulled from the shelves last year for containing an illegal ingredient; the food standards in Taiwan are actually higher than they are in the U.S. in many cases. 
    I was the first one in the rain delay crowd of the rotunda to figure out that it would be more comfortable to wait while seated on the cement floor. My wife's nephews and found a clean spot to park ourselves and eat though one of the nephews was reluctant to sit with us. It is taboo in Taiwan to sit on the floor but after the natives saw this crazy American do it, they figured it must be okay. Finally the three of us sat and ate. One nephew even ate the second chili-cheese dog I had prepared so I bought some KFC instead. 
     While we waited, I took the opportunity to contact my son in New York City on the smartphone and send him some photos of the ballgame. He inherited his love of baseball from me; read my Taiwan Journal story about his visit to Taiwan last-summer: https://taichungjournal.blogspot.tw/2015/08/dong-shan-hs-baseball-field-of-dreams.html. Ariel had just been to a game at the new Yankee Stadium with his friend and had photos to message back. Even he would admit that the grandiose Yankees had lost their luster, the stadium is so cold and impersonal; more like a shrine than a ballpark, but he just had to go. Somewhere I went wrong in my child rearing and bred a Yankee fan.  

     Looking out in the flood lights of the field, I could see the rain tapering into a drizzle. It was almost time to resume the game, I thought. Then, inexplicably, I could see the players from both teams line up down the base paths and kowtow to the meager crowd. I heard a PA announcement I didn't understand. I asked my nephew. "He said the game will continue tomorrow at two o'clock." Keep the tickets for a rain check. We bought cellophane parkas from 7-11 and walked through the drizzle to the car. On the way home, both nephews informed me they would be unable to accompany me to the resumed game if I chose to return. I had three rain checks and an incomplete scorecard. 
     Leona to the rescue! My wife loves baseball but she would rather enjoy it on a TV from a sofa. She had a bad taste in her mouthy from a Met game I brought her to at Shea Stadium years ago; the wait into and out of the parking lot, not to mention the cost of parking, made her hate going. The nosebleed seats in the upper deck made the players look like white ants. However, she wasn't going to let three 350 NT tickets go to waste. She drove me to the ballpark that Saturday on her scooter and we parked, for free, on the sidewalk outside the ticket booth. I drooled at the chance of getting another set of Jimmy's chili-cheese dogs! 
     We were loving watching the game, rooting for the home team. A note about our home team: the Chinatrust Brothers are not the "home" team per se but since the Rhinos have a base in Tao-Yuan, that makes our floaters the "home" team, even though they play most of their games on the road. When a Brother pitcher named Chou Lei came on in the eighth to strike out one, and give up four walks, two hits, and one error resulting in four runs, the late afternoon rain that was starting to creep in again from the west was looking like our cue to go. 
     We left with one one and one out in the top of the ninth. But the baseball gods were angry at me for not staying until the last out and sent a deluge of rain on us as we rode home on the scooter. Luckily, I had prepared a plastic pouch to keep my scorebook in safe and dry.