CPBL | The Afternoon Pro Baseball Began (Taipei Municipal Stadium site)

A full house of 14,350 packed 台北市立棒球場 on the afternoon of 17 March 1990, and the aisles took the overflow. Club executives from the United States, Japan and Korea sat in the guest boxes. 王貞治 stepped in for the ceremonial at-bat and swung with the one-legged stance that had made him famous in Tokyo. 余宏開, who had played for the 紅葉 little-league team a generation earlier, stood in the ceremony party, the amateur game handing something over to the professional one.

Then 張永昌 of 兄弟象 threw the first pitch in Taiwanese professional baseball, 曾智偵 dug in as the first batter, and an argument that had run for years turned into an ordinary ball game. 統一獅 won it 4:3. 杜福明 took the first win in league history, 張永昌 the first loss, 汪俊良 the first home run. That evening, on the same infield, 三商虎 shut out 味全龍 3:0 behind 涂鴻欽.

Contemporary reports disagree on the clock, whether the ceremony started at two or half past, which tells you how much of the day was improvised. The scorecard does not disagree.

The ballpark itself had opened in 1958 on 敦化北路. It closed at the end of 2000 and came down. 台北小巨蛋 (Taipei Arena) occupies the ground now, with a warm-up field along the side and traffic where the outfield was. Nothing on site says what happened here. You have to arrive knowing.

📸 Cover: Photo by lienyuan lee, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons — Taipei Arena on the ballpark site (site view; no free image of the 1990 stadium exists).