October 24, 2004

After our fun night to Tainan, we all woke up and went to Chaiyi for the last baseball game of the season.  It was the Chiayi Whales versus the Taichung Cobras.  Chiayi is the county I live in.  I was surprised to see how empty the stadium was.  But I later learned that the reason it is so empty is that baseball is a very young sport in Taiwan.  Apparently baseball used to be related to the mafia here, but the Taiwanese government has been trying to change that.  So, the stadium is pretty void of fans, but that is slowly starting to change.  The fans were funny and pretty much were in competition the whole time for who could be louder or who had the best tricks to do.  There were fireworks in the middle of the game.....twice...that were set off behind the other teams cheering section.  It was fun to be in the middle of that.  We went out to a pub/restaurant after the game with two of the pitchers from the team.  They are both from the Dominican Republic. One of the guys, Dario, has played on 4 different major league teams at home.  It was fun to hear the inner workings of the Taiwan baseball league. 

It was a fun night of baseball, but nothing compared to a Giants game!!!!