Taiwan's baseball team sets record with 156 ceremonial first pitches
03/26/2021
Taipei, March 26 (CNA) The Tianmu-based Wei Chuan Dragons professional baseball team celebrated their 2021 home opener on Friday by breaking a world record, as some 156 people simultaneously threw out the ceremonial first pitch.
The team, which returned to Taiwan's Chinese Professional Baseball League (CPBL) this year after being disbanded in 1999, was also playing its inaugural game at Tianmu Baseball Stadium in Taipei, the only artificial turf ballpark in Taiwan.
To commemorate the event, the team invited 326 people, including Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲), CPBL Commissioner Tsai Chi-chang (蔡其昌), as well as players from 16 local baseball clubs and 15 school teams to throw out a total of 163 first pitches.
However, because the Guinness Book of World Records requires that the pitches must be simultaneously thrown and successfully caught, seven of the pitches were ultimately discounted, meaning that 156 made it
Last year, the CPBL gained international attention as the first professional baseball league in the world to start its season amid the COVID-19 pandemic, and later as the first league to allow fans to attend in person.
This season, the league has capped the number of fans allowed into stadiums at 78 percent of capacity to comply with the government's COVID-19 prevention efforts.
