Overseas Briefing Baseball in Asia

Author: Scott Greene

How did I end up in a Chinese Internet cafÈ at 4 a.m. on a Monday night in April?

I haven't missed Opening Day of the Major League Baseball season in a long time. For most avid baseball fans, that isn't saying much. They can easily watch the handful of opening day games across the United States by heading to the ballpark or turning on the TV. Living in Asia for over 10 years, though, tuning into a game on Opening Day has never been easy. The twelve hour time difference means that an afternoon game starts in the wee hours of the morning, or an evening game might start at 7 a.m. over in East Asia.

This can make life hard for a fan but I've always found a way to keep up with the action. I would pull all-nighters streaming baseball games online or even miss class in the mornings listening to a radio broadcast in a school library. Sleep or no sleep, class or no class, I never missed an Opening Day, or many other games for that matter. Hence, returning to Asia for my semester abroad, I knew what I would have to do to watch my beloved Atlanta Braves inaugurate the season with their first of 162 games.

However, I didn't know that from Monday through Friday at the Zhejiang University of Technology (ZUT) in Hangzhou, the Internet shuts off at midnight. With the proliferation of the Internet to all corners of China has come the proliferation of online games such as World of Warcraft and Counterstrike, and turning the Internet off keeps the college kids from playing all night. It may keep them from gaming within the campus walls, but anything goes at the numerous Internet cafes (wang ba) shrewdly scattered beyond the gates.

Just as the lack of on-campus Internet cannot impede on one's right to a night exploring the world (of warcraft), nor could Big Brother impede on my right to enjoy opening day of the 2007 Major League Baseball season. So there I sat, across the street from the back gate of ZUT, down a thin alley normally dotted with food hawkers, inside the shadiest of Internet cafes as the Braves opened their new campaign in Philadelphia, Pa. on the other side of the world.

At two in the morning, the Internet cafÈ had very few vacant spots amongst the more than one hundred computers contained within the run-down walls. Though China has reportedly started to crackdown on its under-18 Internet gamers, actually docking them points in their virtual worlds if they exceed three hours of play, there is nothing to stop the masses at this cafÈ from an all-night session battling and casting spells with the trolls and warlocks. Some had clearly not left their seats in hours, maybe even over a day. Quite a streak.

Ultimately, I kept up my own streak of not missing Opening Day, as the Braves won in extra innings and I stayed awake in my chair for every pitch. I trudged back to ZUT just after 4 a.m. on Tuesday morning, trying not to think about my first class of the day, set to start just four hours later. Those I left behind in the Internet cafÈ? They were probably counting down the last two hours until the Internet at ZUT would come back on and they could return to their dorms and continue their "education."