CPBL | A Sixth Team Comes Home to Kaohsiung (Chengcing Lake Baseball Stadium)

More than sixteen thousand people came out to 澄清湖棒球場 on 5 April 2024, on the last day of the tomb-sweeping long weekend, to watch 台鋼雄鷹 play their first home game as a top-flight club. It was the biggest crowd the ballpark had held since 2013, when 義大犀牛 were the tenants and Manny Ramirez was briefly in the lineup. Fans held up signs saying 高雄人挺高雄球隊 — Kaohsiung people back the Kaohsiung team — which is what happens when a city has spent years borrowing other people's. 台灣鋼鐵集團 had walked into the league office in January 2022 to make its case. The league announced a sixth franchise on 25 February that year, and the club spent two seasons in the second division before this. In the run-up, the city government put more than NT$250 million into the ballpark: new infield seating, refitted dugouts, media rooms, outfield padding, a cheer-squad stage. Before the first home pitch, the building itself had been redone. 澄清湖 opened in 1999 on the south-eastern shore of the lake in 鳥松, with about 20,000 seats, and for a long stretch it was the largest ballpark in Taiwan. Its problem was never the seats; it was having nobody permanent to fill them. Now the Hawks play the bulk of their home schedule here, and the park has a resident crowd for the first time in a decade. The lake path starts a few minutes from the gates. A lot of people walk it after day games rather than fight the traffic out. 📸 Cover: Photo by Hou, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons — the ballpark in 2013.