While most sports worldwide have halted indefinitely, a few are looking to get back to business sooner rather than later. No, I’m not talking about reports about leagues talking about possibly playing by a certain date, I mean they’re actually getting back to playing.
That’s the case for the Chinese Professional Baseball League in Taiwan, who is going to start their season this weekend. Teams will play without fans to help prevent spreading COVID-19 but things in Taiwan have subsided to a point that teams are able to play games. One team in that league will test out the “no fans” policy in a rather unique way and only keep out humans.
The Rakuten Monkeys will have 500 robot mannequins dressed in team shirts and holding up signs throughout their stadium for their first game this weekend.
“Since we are not allowed to have any fans in attendance, we might as well have some fun with it,” said the Monkeys’ general manager Justin Liu. “We went with 500 robot mannequins to comply with the current CDC guideline.”
With just 500 people, or robots, it’s not going to look full in a 20,000 seat stadium. Nevertheless, it’s something fun and it’s a small gesture to show a bit of normalcy in an abnormal world.
[CPBL Stats/Photo: CPBL Stats]
