Posted by admin on May 24th, 2008
As an athlete (or at least having been an athlete in the past)
and a sports fan, one of the difficult things about finding
myself on an extended stay in Shanghai, China (setting up
sporting goods manufacturing and other business contacts) is the
near isolation from most American sports. Although basketball,
over the past ten or so years, has become popular among the
Chinese people, baseball has yet to find its way into the sports
culture here. While at every school or playground it’s likely
you’ll find some kid aspiring to become the next Yao Ming,
mention the term “baseball” to most Chinese, even ones who speak
pretty good English, and you’ll likely find yourself having to
search through a phrasebook to find the Chinese phrase for
baseball: “bangqiu” (pronounced bong chi-o).
I had heard from some of the expatriates living in Shanghai that
there was some sort of baseball team playing in the city, so I
did some Google searches to see whether I could find information
about the team. I found a few articles on the Internet about the
Shanghai Eagles’ spring trip to the U.S. to compete against
junior college teams. The game summaries, published by the news
people at a few of the U.S. schools against which the Eagles
played, described a team that had decent pitching, but not much
hitting. As can happen with that kind of team chemistry, the
Shanghai club lost all seven of its exhibition games in the U.S.
I didn’t expect much when I went to watch the team play, but I
was excited to actually see a baseball field again, having been
in China for awhile, and I wanted to experience the baseball
environment here. A Chinese friend of mine hunted down
information about where the Shanghai Eagles played and at what
time, so I took my wife out for a Friday afternoon at the
baseball field.
The old ball game didn’t have any peanuts or Cracker-Jacks, or
hot dogs, or drinks, or very many spectators. There was a mascot
dressed in a chicken suit, and, although we had to search behind
some buildings to find it, surprisingly the field looked pretty
standard. There was a total of probably fifty people in
attendance when the game began. People came and went as the game
progressed. Something that struck me was the feeling that many
there were obviously hard-core baseball fans, the kind you would
expect to find catching foul balls at a MLB park. After quickly
being spotted as one of the only white guys in attendance, I was
approached by Dan Washburn, a news consultant doing a story for
Baseball America. During my conversation with him, he told me
that he met some older Chinese men at one of the games he’d
attended. He mentioned that when he asked them what brought them
out to the event, they told him they played ball when they were
much younger, being forced to leave the game behind when Mao
Zedong did away with the American influence during the Cultural
Revolution. As for the group of boisterous, college-aged
enthusiasts, I was told that a group of them attended the local
baseball college, and they were being trained to later become
professionals. (In China, many children who express a particular
athletic skill are guided down a specialized path devoted
largely to the ultimate fulfillment of their athletic
capabilities.) There were some younger T-ball aged kids at the
game who were introduced to me by the uncle of one of the boys.
He wanted them to practice English with me and my wife, and
later the two boys asked me to play catch with them using the
homemade-looking, well-used baseball one of the boys brought to
the game.
The area we used to play catch was the same grass area outside
the stadium used by the professional teams to warm up their
bullpen pitchers. I used the opportunity to get a feel for how
well a professional pitcher in China throws. The one I saw was
probably throwing in the high-70’s to low 80’s. I watched him
throw curve balls with some good movement and change ups as
well. His control was comparable to an average to good college
pitcher.
The particular game we watched went into extra innings as the
Eagles dropped a large lead late in the game. Being distracted
by people attempting to practice English during the tenth and
eleventh innings, it wasn’t until the twelfth that I noticed a
strange twist to baseball as the Chinese play it. Probably for
the sake of ending the game as soon as possible, they allow both
teams to start extra innings with a runner on second base. One
problem I saw with this approach is that it made the game
boring, as the apparent lack of confidence in hitting on the
part of both teams turned the extra innings into a bunt-fest.
Finally Tianjin broke open and went on to win 9-5 in 12 innings.
During the game, I met some college baseball players who had
become interested in baseball when they came to college. They
don’t attend the designated baseball college, so their
educational involvement baseball is only extra-curricular. They
invited me to play with them, and I have participated in some of
their practices and scrimmages.
On a Wednesday afternoon in May I followed the directions given
to me to meet the team at the Shanghai Teacher’s University on
Guilin Road. The field where the team practiced wasn’t actually
a baseball field. It was a general-purpose field used mainly for
soccer and track exercises. I have quickly come to understand
that the space limitations in Shanghai, similar to most parts of
China, make it so that facilities have to double up on their
usage. It was amusing to me to watch as we set up for a
scrimmage. The areas where right and center field should be was
filled with a mix of people, including a few of our people
playing those positions, and soccer players who were not in the
least interested in what we were doing, especially since they
were fully engaged in their own game. As fly balls dropped among
them, some of the soccer players would pick the balls up and
toss them back, while others would, with a demonstration of
irritation, kick them out of the way. Fortunately for the soccer
players, none of them were hit.
Many of the baseball players were not so lucky. A healthy fear
of hard baseballs traveling at high speeds seems to be second
nature for most Americans, as if we are born with an
understanding that if a ball is fouled off into someone’s face,
it’s going to hurt like heck at best. Although most of them
didn’t understand what I was saying, I attempted many times to
tell those watching the action to back away from the batter and
catcher. During one ten-minute interval, I saw three people get
hit hard in the face or head by baseballs. Throughout the whole
practice there were constant near-misses as well.
On-deck hitters kept with the Chinese custom for preserving
one’s place in line by crowding behind the person in front. That
approach is okay for the local McDonald’s. In fact, if you don’t
push your way up in line, you will find yourself standing in the
same place for a long time, with person after person jumping in
front of you. However, when the person at the front of the line
is swinging a bat, a different set of rules should apply.
During the first practice with the college players, I was
invited to pitch to the team as they scrimmaged. It soon became
apparent that there were various skill levels represented at the
plate. I was reminded of something I saw in Little League (where
kids are usually just beginning to learn how to react to balls
thrown towards them) when a particularly nervous batter
accidentally stepped in front of the plate, opening up towards
the ball so that it hit him directly in the stomach. Fortunately
I was only throwing about 70 mph, so no major damage was done,
except that the player was likely quickly cured of any interest
he had in the new American sport. After that incident the other
players warned me when I was pitching to someone who was new, so
I could slow it down enough for them to take some solid cuts.
In a country where the sport hasn’t really caught on yet, it
amazes me that these players respond so well to the difficulties
of learning baseball. It is obvious that many of these people,
girls and guys alike, have developed a love and even a passion
for the game. Before their season started in June, they
practiced on Wednesdays and Saturdays. Most practice sessions
last five hours or longer. During the time I have participated
with them, I have seen their skills improve, with arm strength
increasing and fielding and batting capabilities doing the same.
So when the Olympics come to Beijing in 2008, what can we expect
from the Chinese team? Will it be somewhat of an embarrassment,
like the Greek team’s performance in 2004? Or will the home team
have a chance to compete? My personal opinion is that the
competition level doesn’t exist in China now for the national
team to compete with the likes of Japan, Taiwan, the U.S., or
Cuba. However, if they can get enough exposure by playing
outside of China, they might just pull off a medal. As for the
long-term outlook on baseball in China, comments made by someone
who has more experience with the system, as an investor and
active baseball supporter in China, give a pretty good take on
the subject. When I mentioned to him that I was considering
opening a baseball retail store or batting cage in Shanghai, one
of the founders of the CBL told me that it wouldn’t be a bad
idea if I didn’t mind starving for a couple of years. A few
years from now however, he said, a much different scenario is
likely to exist, with baseball possibly becoming what it is in
Taiwan.
[This article, written by Richard Robbins, was originally
published online at http://www.robbinssp
orts.com/articles.]
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