During the lockdown period, all the US and Canadian sports shut down. International cricket held on the longer with, as I recall it, the Pakistani league being the last one up and running. After that, there was a sports wasteland.
THEN, Taiwan started baseball back up (May God ever bless and keep them). At first they did it with Chinese commentary and then they realized they were getting an international audience they started English commentary as well. I was getting up to watch 5 am baseball games on Twitter (it may have been my last serious use of that toxic site). Go Fubon Guardians!
At first, I was just happy for the baseball. It was interesting to watch it being played in empty stadiums and, having gone to a lot of minor league games, I was able spot the games as about AA level. That means it was solid ball play most of the time.
The interesting thing was that the cheerleaders were out there doing their job despite the lack of fans in the stands. After a while, you start to realize that the cheerleaders are a big part of the game experience over there. I've seen baseball cheerleaders in some few US stadiums (the Rome Braves spring to mind), but they weren't an integral part of the experience. They are in Taiwan. That became incredibly obvious when they started allowing fans back in and you realized they were paying as much or more attention to the cheerleaders as the game.
The video above follows the Fubon Angels, the cheerleaders for the the Fubon Guardians (clever). I don't speak Chinese (I shudder at the thought of learning a tonal language that requires one to memorize every single word in its entirety), but I think most of it speaks for itself. I'm not sure, but I think it may be harder to become one of these ladies than it is to make it on the baseball team itself.
