Asian baseball has a fanatical following. Photo: Getty Images
Police escorts, five-star hotels, massive stadiums and press conferences for cheerleaders and mascots - this is Asian baseball.
It's a world totally foreign to the Canberra Cavalry and its veteran Michael Wells, who has taken three months off work to be part of the Claxton Shield defence for the Australian Baseball League champion.
The Cavalry has been pitched head-first into the Asia Series where the champions of Japan, Korea, Taiwan and Italy (substituting for China) are also vying for regional glory and $500,000 prizemoney.
Canberra Cavalry stalwart Michael Wells. Photo: Jay Cronan
It goes in as underdog and if money talks, the Cavs' payroll suggests it will keep pretty quiet.
The entire roster of the Cavalry adds up to $47,000, which is dwarfed by the payroll of their Japanese opponents, Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles.
Their lowest paid player is on $24,000, with young gun pitcher Masahiro Tanaka raking in a cool $4 million as part of a payroll of about $23.5 million.
If Wells can make the Cavalry roster for every round of the ABL he'll bolster his bank balance by $2000 as the 40-year-old public servant combines holidays with long-service leave to play the whole season.
His real pay day was walking into the Taichung baseball stadium for the first time on Thursday.
Massive change rooms with individual lockers, silver service food, separate rooms for the coaches - it was like a kid let loose in a candy store and he hadn't even made it onto the field.
It seats 22,000 screaming Taiwanese, whose first and second sports are both baseball.
The outfield is like a bowling green and it puts the picturesque Narrabundah Ballpark to shame.
After hitting the championship-winning home run for the Cavs last season, it would have been easy for Wells to hang up the cleats. But he knew this Taiwan trip was waiting for him.
The biggest crowd he's previously played in front of was about 4000 in the old ABL at Canberra Stadium.
''I've never seen a clubhouse like that … everyone had their own lockers, the coaches had their own segregated area so they could go away and talk, underground batting tunnels,'' Wells said.
''I'm a little in awe of some of the guys, there are guys on millions of dollars contracts, so I guess to get the opportunity to try and perform against them is a challenge I want to take.''
ABL operations manager Ben Foster knows the Asian market intimately, having played and travelled there repeatedly.
He sees it as a crucial market for the ABL and hopes to have reciprocal TV rights with Australia so the ABL becomes the baseball fix for the fanatical Asian fans during their off-season.
But first they need to get on TV in Australia, something Foster hopes is only a year or two away.
He's facing his own David and Goliath battle - trying to compete with cricket, tennis and the A-League in the summer market.
It's a battle he's hoping the unique accessibility of the ABL players will help win.
''For us, I think it will be the experience … and the access that you get by going to the Fort is unique and can put us up against any other sport in Australia,'' Foster said. ''It's just getting more and more people to taste that because the atmosphere, the fan engagement, the fact the players aren't some iconic thing up on a pedestal that you look at but can't touch … that's where I think we win and it's playing up on that.''
Canberra Cavalry ring-in Mitch Dening has only just returned from his first stint playing in Japan. He loved it so much he's planning to return.
Dening likened the atmosphere to a soccer game - drums, chanting and singing.
While they get big crowds to Major League Baseball games in the US, they get blown away by the noise created by their Asian counterparts.
Instead of hot dogs, it's a mixture of ''sushi, fried stuff and their raw stuff''.
Asia's love of baseball engulfs everything, with a media pack asking the Cavalry cheerleaders hard-hitting questions like what their signature moves were.
It's a far cry from the ABL, which struggles to get coverage of its games, let alone mascots.
And while it hopes next year's season-opener between the LA Dodgers and the Arizona Diamondbacks at the SCG will help boost the game's profile, the Cavalry hopes to win its long-odds fight against Taiwan's EDA Rhinos on Saturday and then the Golden Eagles on Sunday.
■ David Polkinghorne is in Taiwan as a guest of the Canberra Cavalry.
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