Nothing says summer like a hot dog and a baseball game, even if it's being played on the other side of the world. In Taiwan the baseball teams don't have home fields, instead they rotate between all of the major cities. So when my coworkers' favorite team, the Elephants, was in town to take on the Whales, it was not to be missed. Plus, the tickets were only about eight dollars or 240 TWD to sit along the first base line. My attempts to explain how much equivalent seats would cost for a Rangers game were met with such disbelief that I had to convince them I knew the exchange rate.
I never thought fans in the US were apathetic until I went to that game. The fans lived and died on every pitch from the first inning until the final out. After a while I had heard enough to join in their chants, even though I couldn't understand a word they were saying. Their fervor was all the more impressive because the Elephants are, to put it nicely, terrible. They rank near the bottom of the standings, and were trailing by 5 or more runs most of the game. Despite this they had still drawn twice as many fans and those fans were still cheering for the final strike thrown by their closer. For the fans the loss wasn't important, instead it really was all about how they played the game.
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