{"id":707151,"date":"2026-05-24T03:33:57","date_gmt":"2026-05-24T03:33:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/707151\/"},"modified":"2026-05-24T03:33:57","modified_gmt":"2026-05-24T03:33:57","slug":"there-are-now-dancing-robots-instead-of-fans-in-the-npb-and-we-dont-know-how-to-feel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/707151\/","title":{"rendered":"There are now dancing robots instead of fans in the NPB and we don&#8217;t know how to feel"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>We\u2019re now months into quarantine, and sports continue to trickle back. While major sports leagues continue to try to find ways to operate, one thing is certain about the plans; there will be no fans for a while.<\/p>\n<p>With coronavirus spreading so rapidly, it doesn\u2019t make sense for fans to gather and risk inflated infection rates. Instead games are being played without fans, but that doesn\u2019t mean there\u2019s nothing in the stands.<\/p>\n<p>We\u2019ve seen cardboard fans, stuffed animals, cutouts of player\u2019s families, and even heard simulated crowd noise. The Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks of the NPB (Nippon Professional Baseball)\u00a0took faux fanning a step further when they introduced their latest cheerleaders \u2013 a section of robot \u201cfans\u201d that dance to the team\u2019s fight song.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">Robots filled in for fans at the Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks\u2019 baseball game on Tuesday in Japan, and they danced to the team&#8217;s fight song. Spectators haven&#8217;t been allowed at games because of the pandemic. The robots will perform at home games through July. <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/ZIlWZk5uIF\" rel=\"nofollow\">pic.twitter.com\/ZIlWZk5uIF<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 CBS Newspath (@cbsnewspath) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/cbsnewspath\/status\/1280861898578300934?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">July 8, 2020<\/a><\/p>\n<p>What do you call the feeling when you\u2019re half terrified, half impressed, and 100% intrigued?<\/p>\n<p>Confused. We are oh sooooo confused.<\/p>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"We\u2019re now months into quarantine, and sports continue to trickle back. While major sports leagues continue to try&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":707152,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2302],"tags":[88854,5,2353,2352],"class_list":["post-707151","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-npb","tag-bardown","tag-baseball","tag-nippon-professional-baseball","tag-npb"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116627456968631089","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/707151","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=707151"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/707151\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/707152"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=707151"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=707151"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=707151"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}