Taiwanese baseball team to play in front of robot mannequins
The Rakuten Monkeys of Taiwan's Chinese Professional Baseball League are replacing fans with mannequins to start the season.
With social distancing measures in place in Taiwan, the club announced it'll have robot mannequins dressed up as fans in the stands at home games when the new CPBL season begins Saturday.
"Since we are not allowed to have any fans in attendance, we might as well have some fun with it," Monkeys general manager Justin Liu told CPBL Stats. "We went with 500 robot mannequins to comply with the current CDC guideline."
With the 2020 #CPBL season starting on April 11 behind closed doors. The Rakuten Monkeys announced that they will have robot mannequins in the stands dressed up as fans. 🤖 pic.twitter.com/miT6JkFoM0
— CPBL STATS (@GOCPBL) April 7, 2020
The season was set to begin March 14 but was pushed back to March 28 and then again to April 11 due to the global COVID-19 pandemic, according to Jason Pan of the Taipei Times.
Fans are banned from gathering outside ballparks and requesting players' autographs, while reporters must follow social distancing regulations during postgame interviews.
Rakuten Monkeys' players met up their new robot mannequin fans. #CPBL https://t.co/sxocHBRQxt pic.twitter.com/9KcgVoS9aE
— CPBL STATS (@GOCPBL) April 7, 2020
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