Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT

Taiwan Dispatch

Taiwan Baseball? It’s ‘Hot Noisy,’ and Ingrained in National Identity

Cheerleaders dancing during a baseball game between the Lamigo Monkeys and Fubon Guardians at the Taoyuan International Baseball Stadium in Taiwan, in May.Credit...Isaac Lawrence for The New York Times

TAOYUAN, Taiwan — As the batter steps to the plate, the clamor crescendoes, a rhyming, thumping chant, often tailored to his name.

Cheerleaders prance atop the dugout, accompanied by blaring recorded music or even live drums and brass instruments. Fans wield all manner of noise makers — clappers, pairs of plastic bats, small vuvuzelas — pretty much nonstop for nine innings.

They are not trying to distract the opposing team’s batter, but to cheer on their own. How any batter manages to concentrate enough in the din to get a hit is anyone’s guess.

“Yi qi an da! Yi qi an da!” (pronounced ee-chi-ahn-dah) goes one of the more general chants, which is, roughly, the way to say, “Let’s get a hit together.”

On a recent night, Chin Jou-lin, an ebullient 28-year-old fan, was sitting along the right-field line at Taoyuan International Baseball Stadium in this city in northwest Taiwan. She said she had heard that in America you could actually hear the crack of the bat hitting the ball. She giggled, incredulous.

“I can’t imagine,” she said.

To say baseball is a national obsession in Taiwan might be an overstatement since its fortunes have risen and fallen over the years. It does, however, seem deeply ingrained in its national identity as a small but spirited bastion of democracy.

Image
Cheerleaders before a baseball game against the Lamigo Monkeys and Fubon Guardians.Credit...Isaac Lawrence for The New York Times
Image
Baseball is an important part of the national identity in Taiwan, helping to distinguish it from China.Credit...Isaac Lawrence for The New York Times

The 500-note of the island’s currency, the New Taiwan Dollar, depicts a baseball team, paying homage to its phenomenally successful youth teams, which, as any ex-Little Leaguer of a certain age will recall, dominated the Little League World Series from 1969 to 1996, winning 17 of 28 finals.

At a time when China endeavors to isolate Taiwan diplomatically, baseball remains one of the island’s potent instruments of soft power and a path to international recognition. When the sport debuted in the Olympics in Barcelona in 1992, Taiwan won the silver medal, losing the championship game to another small, baseball-crazed island, Cuba.

“Brazil has football,” said Shih Fu-dao, a taxi driver, as he drove a colleague and me to another game, this time in Tainan, in southern Taiwan. “Taiwan has baseball.”

Quoting taxi drivers is a journalistic cliché that is best avoided, but Mr. Shih knew whereof he spoke. His son, Hsiang-kai, played professionally here for four seasons, from 2004 to 2008.

For all its obvious connections to the American pastime, baseball is not an American import. It came through Japan, where baseball had already been played for a quarter century when the Japanese seized Taiwan in 1895. At the time, Taiwan was controlled by the Qing-era rulers of China.

Andrew D. Morris, a contributing writer to “Baseball Beyond Our Borders: An International Pastime,” wrote that the Japanese legacy shapes the game to this day, one more thing that distinguishes Taiwan’s identity from China’s.

After the forces of Chiang Kai-shek retreated to Taiwan and established the Republic of China following the Communist Revolution in 1949, the new government sought to erase the vestiges of Japanese rule, except for baseball.

The game’s history since then has been as turbulent as the island’s transition to democracy.

The Chinese Professional Baseball League — its very name a reflection of Taiwan’s complicated history with China — formed only in 1990, after a long era of martial law that ended in 1987.

Teams have formed and folded, the league expanding and contracting. Scandals over gambling tarred the game. In 1996, gangsters kidnapped players who apparently did not follow through on a fix.

An even broader betting scandal erupted in 2008, leading to accusations against scores of players for accepting cash and sex with prostitutes to fix games. One team was expelled; another withdrew.

Image
A player for the Chinatrust Brothers in a game against the Uni-President 7-Eleven Lions.Credit...Billy H.C. Kwok for The New York Times
Image
A fan with a Lamigo Monkey mascot. Many spectators use noisemakers during the games.Credit...Isaac Lawrence for The New York Times

A year later scandal flared up again, implicating players from the Brother Elephants, one of the league’s most popular teams.

Attendance plummeted. Some blamed the scandals, but others blamed the increasing numbers of foreign players.

A newspaper columnist complained in 1998 that so many foreign pitchers were being signed that the pitchers’ mound was practically a “foreign concession,” a bitter allusion to China’s experience as a nation exploited by the colonial powers of Europe.

At the game’s nadir in 2009, Taiwan’s government and league executives intervened and vowed to clean up the sport, improving salaries and policing gambling more aggressively.

The league since then has settled down with four teams: the Lamigo Monkeys; the Uni-President 7-Eleven Lions, named after the convenience store, which is ubiquitous here; the Chinatrust Brothers, the franchise that emerged from the tainted Brother Elephants; and the newest, the Fubon Guardians.

The Monkeys, winners of the championship three of the last four years, play their home games in a stadium beside the high-speed train station in Taoyuan. The Guardians signed a lease last December to play theirs in a stadium in New Taipei City. The other teams rotate among several stadiums, though they are broadly associated with their cities: the Uni-Lions in Tainan and the Brothers in Taichung.

There is a consensus the league has been making a comeback. One reason is the most famous foreigner to play here: Manny Ramirez, a player with a stellar, though checkered career in the United States.

In 2013, after two suspensions for violating Major League Baseball’s drug policy, Mr. Ramirez came to Taiwan. While he played in only 49 games, attendance soared and it has remained steady since.

Image
Food options at the games range from KFC to squid on a stick and ramen noodles.Credit...Billy H.C. Kwok for The New York Times
Image
After the game between the Uni Lions and Chinatrust Brothers.Credit...Billy H.C. Kwok for The New York Times

(His presence might have been fleeting, but he was here long enough to be the source of what is arguably one of the most memorable home run calls by a television announcer. Ever. “This ball is long gone,” he shouted, punctuating each word, “just like the ex-girlfriend who will never return!”)

While the league might not have the renown of Japan’s professional league, it has sent a dozen players to the Major Leagues, and continues to attract foreign players.

“On the road it’s the worst,” said Michael Nix, an American pitcher for the Monkeys, describing the hometown cheers for the batters he has to face. “You get used to it.”

Attending games at the stadiums can feel like a tailgate party that rolls right into the stands before turning into an aerobic workout. Everyone seems to know not only the words to a lineup’s worth of chants, which have a delirious mix of English and Chinese, but also the dances that go with them.

The experience at the ballpark can be so giddily polyglot that it seems only a little odd that a cheesy 1979 pop song by the German band Dschinghis Khan could be repurposed as a cheer for the Monkeys. “Go, go, Lamigo ….”

Ms. Chin is a devoted fan of the Monkeys but also of the vibe in the stands. She commutes regularly to the games from Miaoli, an hour south by train. She was there on a recent evening with her boyfriend.

“He likes baseball,” she explained, speaking a little more loudly since at that particularly deafening moment the Monkeys were padding their lead over the Guardians, 15-2, “but he doesn’t like to dance.”

Asked what attracted her to the game, she used a two-word phrase in Chinese whose meaning might not otherwise translate were it not uttered in a Taiwan ballpark on a sultry summer night:

“Hot noisy.”

Image
The Tainan Stadium before the game between the Uni Lions and Chinatrust Brothers.Credit...Billy H.C. Kwok for The New York Times
A correction was made on 
Aug. 5, 2018

An earlier version of this article misstated the year of the Olympics in Barcelona. They were in 1992, not 2002.

A correction was made on 
Aug. 6, 2018

An earlier version of this article misstated the number of teams that play their home games in a dedicated stadium. The Monkeys and the Guardians do, not just the Monkeys.

How we handle corrections

Follow Steven Lee Myers on Twitter: @stevenleemyers

Olivia Mitchell Ryan contributed research.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 4 of the New York edition with the headline: The Crack of the Bat? More Like the Roar of the Crowd. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT