The CPBL live English-language broadcasts will continue all summer and fall

Earlier this week I wrote about the live television broadcasts of the Chinese Professional Baseball League, which has begun its season in empty stadiums in Taiwan. Their season began a couple of weeks ago and Eleven Sports Taiwan had begun carrying games live on Twitter last week.

Included in my article was a Q-and-A I had with Eleven Sports Taiwan’s lead English-language broadcaster, Richard Wang. I asked Wang if he thought the broadcasts would continue:

I certainly hope so. We will be getting notice from Eleven Sports Network. The earliest broadcasting schedule should start next Friday as the Lions returns to Tainan for their home series.

There’s good news on that front today:

The CPBL’s schedule goes through mid-October, except for a 2½-week break from July 6-23. Here is the entire schedule (.pdf). Note that the calendar shown has Monday as the first day and Sunday as the last (the entire league has Mondays off). All the games begin at either 6:35 p.m. local time (5:35 a.m. CT) or 5:05 p.m. local time (4:05 a.m. CT).

I’m going to try something here at BCB on Friday, which is the next scheduled CPBL broadcast — a game thread. I’m not sure how many of you will be awake at 5:35 a.m. CT, but the games have been running more than three hours, so even if you can’t watch the beginning of the game, you might be able to catch the last few innings. All the games can be watched live on the Eleven Sports Taiwan Twitter feed, with announcers Richard Wang and Wayne McNeil.

So, a game thread will post here Friday, April 24 at 5 a.m. CT, about half an hour before the first pitch in Taiwan. That game will be between the Rakuten Monkeys and the Uni-President 7-ELEVEN Lions. (All the CPBL teams are named after their corporate owners, not the city they play in.) If this works out, I might post game threads for other CPBL games.

It might not be MLB, but it is live baseball. Enjoy!