I’ve not been to the baseball for a while, or at least to a proper game. Jen and I went to a game in Darwin a couple of years ago that turned out to be little more than a knockabout and an excuse for a picnic. I’m not even sure that they kept score. As it’s more than four years since we left Korea, it must be that long since we’ve seen a baseball game. Never mind, a brief visit to Taiwan gave us the chance to put things right.
The baseball was actually a fallback option as the trip had been primarily to see a football game. However the Taiwan Premier League appears to be less organised than the lower divisions of the Stockton Sunday League and the game that we’d planned to see had been shunted, with minimal publicity, a couple of hundred miles to the other end of the island.
Whatever, an evening at the baseball makes a fine alternative and so we took a taxi to the Taoyuan International Baseball Stadium. The area around the stadium was as busy as the roads on the way there had been and fans milled around the perimeter, making their way to the various gates.
We did an entire lap before finding the ticket office and after weighing up whether the home or away sections would be emptier we opted for outfield seats on the Monkey side of the bleachers. I can’t remember how much it cost to get in and the ticket doesn’t really make it clear. It might have been 350 Taiwanese dollars, which is about nine quid. Alternatively, that 350 figure might have been a block number or something. Sorry.
We got inside early in the first innings and found seats in an emptyish area towards the back. The section gradually filled up as the game went on with a mixture of families, couples and small groups of friends. I hadn’t been sure of the rules about bringing drink in and so hadn’t brought any beer with me. My gamble paid off though as I was able to buy reasonably cold cans of something that turned out to be made by OB, a Korean brewer. Or at least under licence from them. It seemed quite appropriate for the baseball and took me back a few years to the evenings spent at Jamsil.
Elephant Brothers had a few hundred fans to our left making a decent racket and overall the seventeen thousand attendance was pretty impressive. I’d forgotten most of the nuances of the sport and a fair proportion of the rules but it didn’t really matter. I’m happy just to sit with a beer as the sun goes down and wait for someone to twat the ball over the fence.
The visitors took the lead in the second innings and after being pegged back regained the advantage in the seventh. Lamingo Monkeys levelled in the eighth at 3-3 and then nicked a winner. I think they are having the better season of the two teams but I could be wrong. Fifty percent chance that I am.
As the game drew to a close we were turfed out of our seats by stewards who I think were setting up for a post-game concert and firework show. We watched the final balls from the posh seats down the side before nipping out and having the good fortune to quickly find a cab. All in all, it was very similar to going to the baseball in Korea and that’s a good thing.
Tags: Elephant Brothers, Lamingo Monkeys, Taiwan baseball, twat it over the fence
Trail of the Lion King 
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