Dear Chinese Professional Baseball League, and the people of Taiwan:
From the bottom of my heart, thank you very much. You have no idea how important it is to see you start your 2020 season, even with a five-week delay.
Look, the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic is already doing great damage to all sports in the world. From amateur to top-tier it has especially hurt the sports fan, the avid follower who spends a chunk of the day to support a team, as a way to find some relief from the horrors and troubles of everyday life.
Some of us are already losing hope in our favorite league’s chance to return to activities during the whole of 2020, let alone in the following weeks. The NBA is gone, the XFL is gone, the Olympics got one year postponed. It doesn’t look good. But you are back, and you have offered a much-needed window of hope to world sport. You’re showing us there is a way through this, that we can overcome this horrendous disease, giving us a peek into what it looks on the other side.
But we know the deep implications of this. We know that your return could simply not be possible without Taiwan’s remarkable management of the pandemic. Massive testing, central control, institutional strength, big data transparency, which stands as one of the world’s best. We know our countries still have a long way to go, and a lot to learn. To learn fast since people are dying by the thousands.
Before we even look at your sports organizations. We need to take a deep dive into your health system, into your institutions, and into your culture. But big data is not enough, we need big stories. We need to see the heroes winning against the odds and the adversities, subverting the apocalyptic narrative of the times. It is why we watch sports. Your league is now allowing us the opportunity to believe in solutions, to believe in a certain return to normality, to know that the world will be okay. And the fans are also getting a treat since Taiwan is still pretty great at playing Baseball.
You have given the world something to look up to. Thank you Taiwan.
You can watch the Taiwanese Baseball League on Twitch, Yahoo Sports Taiwan, Eleven Sports, and if you can read Chinese, or rely on Google Translate, you can watch from the QQ Live streaming app. And you can read a guide to the 2020 CPBL season in English here.
Follow Manzanares de la Rosa on Twitter @afhelvegum
