Baseball in full swing in Taiwan, even in empty stadiums

When Wang Wei-chen had a base hit for the Chinatrust Brothers, no one booed or cheered from the stands at the suburban Taipei ballpark.

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 were devoid of fans Friday night for the game between Chinatrust Brothers and Fubon Guardians, down from the average crowd of 6,000 at professional baseball games in Taiwan. No fans have come to any games here since play started on April 11.

Taiwan's five-team Chinese Professional Baseball League is barring spectators over concerns of spreading the coronavirus in a crowded space.

But Taiwan has relatively few cases of COVID-19, so the league decided it was safe to let in players, coaches, cheerleaders, costumed mascots, face mask-wearing batboys and the media.

"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 Brothers.

"We are still lucky, since we have not stopped our season and people can still see us in this way."
Fan-less games, he said, are "a good way to stop coronavirus, but no one knows when coronavirus will stop, and it's good to have the games on anyway."
"They need to focus on the field, and often noise from fans can throw off their state of mind."