You’re from Canada? You must love hockey, right?
I hate to be that guy, but yeah, I’m a typical Canadian, and a big hockey fan.
When I was young, I played basketball, baseball and practiced Tae Kwon Doe, but never really bothered to watch any other sports on television.
After my arrival in Taiwan, the time difference with North America made it difficult to keep up with everything happening back home, but I tried my best to continue watching hockey as much as I could, which meant I was waking up quite early every day to watch the games live.
Then, one beautiful summer’s afternoon, a bunch of friends and I decided to go check out a Taiwanese baseball game as we had heard that the atmosphere was electric, at least compared to baseball games back home.
Making our way to the Tianmu Baseball Stadium in Taipei, we were almost dumbstruck by everything that was happening. I still remember having to be reassured several times that we were actually allowed to bring our own food and drinks into the stadium - something unheard of back in North America.
That first game was so long ago that I can’t even remember who the opponent was, but the team that stuck with me were the Brother Elephants, who in their beautiful yellow and black uniforms took to the field and sent the crowd into a frenzy. After that first experience, we tried to make it a regular weekend excursion to go and watch games whenever we had free time, but when a match fixing scandal rocked the nation’s baseball league, it’s popularity kind of died off and we stopped going.
In 2013, the Brother Elephants were sold to a new owner and moved to Taichung in central Taiwan. With the scandal in the rear view mirror, the popularity of baseball in Taiwan started growing again, as did my interest in the game. For the first year or two we just watched games on television, but then some friends and I started making regular trips to Taichung to watch games, or to the games held here in Taoyuan when the team was in town.
Now known as the CTBC Brother Elephants (中信兄弟), the team may have changed owners, but it retained its massive fan base, and the beautiful yellow uniforms that they’re known for. That being said, even though the team is a perennial contender for the championship, they developed somewhat of a reputation for choking. Diehard fans refer to this as part of the PTSD whenever the playoffs roll around as the Brothers have ended the year with heartbreak on far too many occasions.
Hoping to help break the curse, a group of us went to Taichung for Game 7 of the Taiwan Series in 2020, thinking that our presence might help the team prevail. Unfortunately, we we wrong. They ended up losing again.
So, in 2021, when the team once again found itself in the Taiwan Series against the same team that they lost against the year before, we figured it best to just watch the game at a local bar.
But to our surprise, they actually won. And they weren’t messing around. They won with a four game sweep of the Tainan’s Uni-Lions.
This year, the team came out with their yearly slogan, “Run it back,” which I admittedly was a bit cheesy, but the point was that they were looking to win back-to-back championships.
From the start of the year, things weren’t looking very good - A number of injuries, COVID infections and foreign players leaving the team resulted in a poor performance in the first half of the season with Taoyuan’s Rakuten Monkey’s (桃園樂天猴子) winning the first half season championship.
It looked like that trend was going to continue through the second half, until one day the team suddenly rediscovered its championship prowess and went on a huge winning streak, earning themselves a spot in the playoffs.
However, due to a somewhat confusing mathematics and the system set up by the league, three teams entered the playoffs with the Brothers and the Wei-Chuan Dragons (味全龍) being forced to play a series that is similar to the MLB’s wildcard system. Starting that series up a game (thanks to math), the Brothers ended up prevailing over the Dragons after some pretty entertaining matches.
Winning Games 1 and 2 of the Taiwan Series against the Rakuten Monkeys here in Taoyuan, the series shifted back to Taichung for the next two games and my friends and I were faced with a choice - do we watch the game together at the bar, or try our luck watching one in person? When tickets went on sale, we had to decide quickly as they would sell out fast, so we ended up deciding to go to Game 4 to watch the game live.
When the Brothers won Game 3 in Taichung, we started to get a bit exciting as there was a chance of a sweep and the championship being won with us in person. Our experience in the past though, the PTSD I mentioned earlier, prevented us from getting too worked up, though.
Interestingly, even though I’ve probably been to about a hundred games over my years in Taiwan, I’ve never brought my camera. Most of the time when I’m at the games, I’m with friends and we’re having fun and drinking, so I don’t want to have to worry about my camera. This time though, I figured it was probably a good idea to bring my camera along just in case.
And I’m glad I did.
The team followed through and actually “Ran it back” curing some of the PTSD that fans talk about, at least until next year.
As a sports fan, it’s always great to see your team win a championship at home, but as a foreigner in Taiwan, it’s also an interesting cultural experience that I got to share with 20,000 other fans. It was an amazing experience and I’m looking forward to the new slogan they come up with for next year! Obviously, this isn’t the normal kind of thing I write about, I just wanted to share some thoughts and my photos from the experience and hope you enjoy them as well!
