The Rakuten Monkeys, a Chinese Professional Baseball League team, will have fans in the stands when it opens the season on April 11 — just not at all the way you might've imagined.

The Monkeys will play before 500 robot fans. This is not a drill.

With the 2020 #CPBL season starting on April 11 behind closed doors. The Rakuten Monkeys announced that they will have robot mannequins in the stands dressed up as fans. ? pic.twitter.com/miT6JkFoM0

— CPBL STATS (@GOCPBL) April 7, 2020

To be fair, some of the fans are just mannequins. That's still weird, of course, but nothing compared to the robots who've been programmed to hold up signs during the game.

All of that in an effort to create a more "normal" atmosphere, but it's tough to come up with many scenarios that are less normal than walking to the plate as R2-D2 and Wall-E sing Take Me Out to the Ballgame.

On the bright side, you'd have to assume that various RoboCops will be working stadium security, so that's likely a year-over-year upgrade.