Rakuten Monkeys vs. Uni-President 7-ELEVEN Lions, Friday 4/24, 5:35 a.m. CT

It’s very early in the morning Chicago time, but in Taiwan it’s headed toward evening and that means live baseball courtesy of Eleven Sports Taiwan, which is carrying games from the Chinese Professional Baseball League (CPBL) in English with announcers Richard Wang and Wayne McNeil. I had an Q-and-A with Richard Wang earlier this week and wrote about the CPBL and how it’s the only league playing live baseball during the pandemic. (KBO in Korea is slated to start next month).

While the games in Taiwan are being played in empty stadiums, they still have sound, from robot drummers, and they have the cheer squads that would normally be hyping up the fans who aren’t there, though some of them are replaced by cardboard cutouts.

Here is a Twitter feed with some useful info about the CPBL, including stats and the starting pitchers for tonight’s (this morning’s?) game.

Here is the Eleven Sports Taiwan Twitter feed, where you will find the live broadcast of today’s game beginning at about 5:30 a.m. CT.

Enjoy the game and discuss amongst yourselves.