While the season started with no fans in the stands, the restrictions eased by early May. In the early broadcasts, Wang made a point of noting how many days Taiwan had gone without any new coronavirus cases. "This was really, really crazy for us," Wang recalls. The first five games garnered over five million views. The CPBL was the only professional baseball being played anywhere in the world, and baseball fans starved for any action on the field were able to tune in via Eleven Sports Taiwan's Twitter feed. Watch 2020 #CPBL regular season #FubonGuardians vs #RakutenMonkeys #ForTheFans #ELEVENSPORTS in ENGLISH!!! - ELEVEN SPORTS TAIWAN April 16, 2020Īfter two games were rained out, the season got underway in mid-April. ⚾| 7 #LIVE Pro-baseball game here in #Taiwan on ELEVEN SPORTS. Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, and baseball fans from all around the world! Good morning, good afternoon and good evening! Riding his scooter around Taipei, he would often get looks from people who overheard him rehearsing, among other things, his openings. Wherever he went, he spoke his lines out loud so he could get a feel for pronunciation and tone. So there are a lot of tiny things like that," Wang says. In the beginning, I was like, 'There's a first pitch, and that's a strike.' They represent the same thing, but they don't really sound the same. "That's something I heard a lot but wasn't able to deliver right away. He focused on key phrases, like: In there for a strike. With only 10 days until the first game, Wang put his MLB TV subscription to heavy use, listening to games from 20, the year his beloved Red Sox won the World Series. But I really had no idea if I could do the broadcast thing or not," he says. "I can have a conversation with my friends. His initial response: Are you sure?After all, English was not his native tongue. An executive at Eleven Sports Taiwan thought, why not seize the moment to introduce the world to the Guardians, the Monkeys, the Lions and the Brothers? Wang was tapped to announce the games in English, a job he'd never done before and wasn't sure he was up to. By April, Taiwan already had the coronavirus under control, and its four-team professional baseball league, known as the Chinese Professional Baseball League, was set to begin its season playing to empty stadiums. TAIWAN - 9 days in a row w/o new confirmed case! GOOD JOB EVERYONE! Let’s go to a baseball game! Stay tuned w/ TV & for the only baseball game with the most enthusiastic fans in the house, ONLY in Taiwan! Game time 5:05pm (GMT+8) /xhIsKCLijo- Richard "Boston" Wang May 16, 2020įast-forward 20-odd years to this spring. I remember it was Joe Castiglione on WEEI." I just listened to the radio to sharpen my listening comprehension for my English. "When there was a night game, I would have the lights spilling into my living room from Fenway Park," he recalls. From his fourth floor apartment, he was able to see the top of the Green Monster and hear the roar of the crowds. His own love of baseball was cemented in the 1990s when he spent time in Boston studying architecture and living a couple alleys away from Fenway Park. Taiwan's national obsession with baseball dates back half a century, to an era when its teams dominated the Little League World Series just as Taiwan was becoming more isolated on the international stage.Īs a kid growing up in Taiwan, Wang remembers his father staying up all night to watch international baseball tournaments taking place halfway around the world. "Nobody would have ever thought that we were going to be having a very busy season like this." "It's definitely a very good thing for us to do, and I'm very proud of being part of it," Wang says. ![]() Little did he know come October, he would be working double duty, as Taiwan's early success beating back the pandemic would lead to a whole new turn in his career and a chance to introduce Taiwan's professional baseball league to audiences around the world in English. Since 2014, Wang has been one of the voices of Fox Sports Taiwan, calling MLB games in Mandarin Chinese from his hometown Taipei. When Major League Baseball announced on March 12 that it was suspending spring training due to the spread of the coronavirus, Richard Wang's first thought was, OK, this may be a very slow year.
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