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Bill Veeck Gives Them a C-minus in Hustling

Live sports are back! On Taiwan.

The Chinese Professional Baseball League re-opened play this week. You can livestream their games. I give it a week before you can bet on them too.

Naturally there were many adjustments due to the coronavirus, the most notable one being no spectators allowed at any of the ballparks. No live ones, that is. The Rakuten Monkeys (scouting report, powerful lineup, weak pitching, this is the team for you Red Sox fans) placed mannequins, some of them robots and cardboard cutouts, all carefully shown as wearing masks, in seats around their yard.

Some of the cutout fans were depicted with cardboard pets, dogs and cats. This was adorable, but I couldn't help imagining how the stand would be covered in puke by the fifth inning as real dogs and cats ate whatever concession crumbs and spillage dropped to the stadium floor.

The thing that bothered me most about the Brave New World of Monkey fandom wasn't the creepiness of the mannequins, although they were, but that Rakuten management did not go far enough with its bizarre conceit. The astroturf fans were in clumps, between plenty of empty seats, even in the box seat area. The clumps meant it wasn't an attempt to depict social distancing. So why stop there? This was Opening Day. The marketing department should at least have depicted a pretend sellout. Monkey fans at home watching on TV would've welcomed a little artificial enthusiasm for the new season.

Maybe they were worried about parking.

posted by Michael Gee @ 9:05 AM