CPBL: Rakuten Monkeys jump on UniLions with early homers

In the first professional baseball seen by at least some Americans this year, the fearsome Rakuten Monkeys of the CPBL battered the UniLions.

It was game day – Apr. 24 – and I awoke early to follow the hallowed baseball tradition, brewing a strong cup of tea and heading to the office to log onto my Twitter feed.

Time was tight. The CPBL game would start at 6:30 a.m. in the eastern US: The UniLions v. the Rakuten Monkeys, featuring the Taiwanese Babe Ruth, Chu Yu-Hsien, the Chimps’ most fearsome hitter in a lineup of fearsome hitters. Chu had belted five home runs in six games and was hitting a cool .542.

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Going in, the home team, as such, remained a mystery, but that’s the way it always is, right?

Anyway, I was on Eleven Sports – Taiwan, via Twitter (@Eleven SportsTW), so excited I nearly forgot to throw away my teabag!

I worried a bit about being able to distinguish among players whose names, to a Western ear, sound a bit similar. Or the rhythm is similar or something. (I hated my Linguistics course in college.)

As it turned out, the UniLions of Tainan City were the home squad. Rakuten, headquartered in Taoyuan City, would bat first, once the co-ed cheerleaders finished their pre-game routine for the absent fans.

For those who didn’t get the Twitter presentation, the Monkeys wore dark red jerseys and caps, a bit like one of Cincinnati’s uniforms. The Lions wear home uniforms a bit like San Francisco’s but with very fine pinstripes.

Beyond the presence of cute choreography, the other predominant early impression was created by the English-language announcers, Rod Chen and Keith Chiang. That was: The Monkeys were liable to pound the Lions. Holding them to three or four runs through five innings could be considered a good job.

Well, after all, Rakuten was 6-0, and the home team was merely 3-5.

Finally, though, the first live professional baseball play seen in 2020 by many(?) Americans was a decidedly easy groundout to short. Tainan’s left-handed starter, C.Y. Jiang, was off to a good start. That lasted until the next batter, Lin Li, one of more than a dozen Lins on both squads, doubled to right-center off the base of the wall.

The fourth hitter, Lin Chih-Ping, then blasted a homer to RCF, highlighting two more realities in Taiwanese baseball. Hitters go the other way quite a bit, largely because a lot of breaking balls are thrown, so many that some hitters sit on curves and adjust to fastballs, or so the story goes, according to Chen (or Chaing) – I never sorted the announcers out.

Truthfully, this sitting on curves seemed to be actual reality. Even the weaker hitters appeared to do it.

The game was moving along nicely, and oddly, the absence of fans wasn’t terribly bothersome, on TV anyway, partly because of piped-in music and occasional shots of the cheerleaders.

However, the Rakuten Monkeys proved to be every bit as difficult as expected, and the game was broken open in the top of the third when DH Chu blasted his second, long HR, a grand slam to right off a hanging curve that immediately followed a bullet foul off a fastball. The ball landed in the second deck and may still be there.

“What do you throw this guy?” intoned Rod (or Keith).

At the end of five, Rakuten held a 9-0 lead, and the notion among Twitter fans had to be: Well, maybe the Lions will score. They had put two runners on base in both the fourth and fifth innings.

Before the sixth, a male singer in a Tainan uniform presented a soulful song. He was considerably more than competent.

Was the game over? Both teams stalled for two innings.

The Monkeys scored twice again in the top of the eighth, the first time on a ball hit to the opposite field (of course), a single this time by a left-handed hitter just out of the reach of the shortstop to his right.

The next inning allowed the broadcast team an opportunity to demonstrate the CPBL can handle replays fairly quickly and accurately on a bang-bang out at first. The technician on the field with the umpire doing the review wore a mask.

But the Monkeys again scored – three times. The score moved to 14-0.

In the home eighth, Z.W. Deng homered for the Lions, and then they scored three in the ninth. Deng’s ball was actually pulled to right-center. Two of the final three Lions runs were the result of a Monkeys error at first.

Y.J. Chen, the final Lions batter grounded out 5-3, and the contest ended 14-4, cementing the impression that the other three CPBL teams can only hope to contain the Rakuten Monkeys, but most days they won’t.