The sports world here in the United States has halted completely from the sweeping coronavirus pandemic that has put athletics on the backburner to our own safety, but around the world a few are looking to get back to business sooner rather than later.
That’s the case for the Chinese Professional Baseball League in Taiwan, who is going to start their season this weekend. Teams will play without fans to help prevent spreading COVID-19 but things in Taiwan have subsided to a point that teams are able to play games. One team in that league will test out the “no fans” policy in a rather unique way and only keep out humans.
The Rakuten Monkeys will have 500 robot mannequins dressed in team shirts and holding up signs throughout their stadium for their first game this weekend.
“Since we are not allowed to have any fans in attendance, we might as well have some fun with it,” said the Monkeys’ general manager Justin Liu. “We went with 500 robot mannequins to comply with the current CDC guideline.”
Although the baseball stadiums usually fit 20,000 plus, it obviously won't fill the entire venue, but it is definitely a start for some sort of normalcy.