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Play by Play: How a Taiwan Sports League Opened its 2020 Season Despite
COVID-19

Ralph Jennings

   TAIPEI, TAIWAN - When the coronavirus began raising concerns in China
   this past January, Taiwan's professional baseball league set up a task
   force to help determine whether the outbreak would spread into nearby
   Taiwan and scuttle a scheduled 2020 season start in March.

   After China sealed off its disease outbreak center Wuhan and hundreds
   of Taiwanese began fleeing back from Lunar New Year holidays in China
   around the start of February, the Taipei-based Chinese Professional
   Baseball League brought on a legal expert too.

   "We figured conditions were extremely serious," commissioner Wu
   Chih-yang said in an interview.

   A veteran sports watcher anywhere in the world would assume at this
   point that the league delayed play until May, June or whenever. Pro
   baseball and basketball have put off play in the United States.
   Baseball has been halted for now in Japan and South Korea. The 2020
   Tokyo Olympics will take place in 2021.

   But the Taiwanbaseballleague opened play just three weeks late, on
   April 11. Its five teams intend to finish all 240 normal season games
   before Decembereven though at the present time the teams are playing
   the games without their usual crowds of thousands.

   Here's how the league beat the odds.

   As the disease spread in China in February and March, Taiwan's league
   was trying to plan its normal season as well as two other series
   including one in preparation for the 2020 summer Olympics, which hadn't
   yet been postponed.

   At the same time, the Taiwan government's Central Epidemic Command
   Center was laying out ideas on how to manage large events such as ball
   games, but they were just suggestions, Wu recalled.

   In view of the advice, the government's suggestionsandconfusion after
   two brief season delays in March and Taiwan's light coronavirus
   caseload, the league decided to start play with empty stadiums but
   enough atmosphere that viewers at home could imagine the real thing.

   Taiwan's outbreak of the coronavirus-caused respiratory disease
   COVID-19 has reached 429 cases over a total 23 million population, one
   of the developed world's lowest infection rates. It's low enough to
   protect gatherings of athletes and other personnel, the league found.
   But crowds of spectators, who had averaged 6,000 per game in previous
   seasons, could spread the virus, Wu said.

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