A Taiwanese Baseball Game

I went to a Taiwanese baseball game the other day. It was the Whales (pink and green uniforms) versus the Elephants (yellow uniforms). However, they were all wearing pink hats, and they even used pink bats at some points. The best reasons for the pink accessories we came up with were, it was mother's day weekend, and they were just trying to show some motherly affection? We got there a little late but the game was just starting, and it really got of to a thrilling start. No one scored until the fifth inning. Apparently they were pretty evenly matched teams.

For a little background of the game, they were both corporate teams, one played for China Telecom, and I don't remember the other one. I know Taiwan is really stoked off of baseball, to the point of having a picture of a celebrating little league team on the 500 NT bill, but, just judging from how much people follow the corporate league, I don't think there is an actual professional league.

Anyway, one of the main differences I noticed about the game was the approach to encouraging players, and the appropriate noise level. At all the baseball games I can remember going to in the states, the announcers played the cavalry charge and aggressive music and the crowd got rilled up, but all before the batter stepped up to the plate. Then the batter was given a courteous silence, so he could concentrate on hitting the ball. However, there were no announcers here, and the Taiwanese fans didn't start making noise until the batter was about to swing. I can only assume that their motivations were the same (wanting the batter to do well), but it was interesting to see different implementation strategies. The music (or noise) used to encourage the players also highlighted differences between cultures. I think Americans are pretty big fans of the cavalry charge, but the Taiwanese people had a drummer. And not like some 15 year old rapping out a peppy beat you could jig to. No, there was a drum large enough to boil small farm animals in, and a dude with two hammers sounding out the call to battle. It was impressive and motivating, but alas, the weren't too creative with the beat, and after the second hour it got pretty old.

It was the Elephants who finally scored in the fifth inning, and from there the game was over. They scored again in the sixth inning and the poor whales never had a chance to come back.