Eagles vs. Twins

The most popular sport in South Korea is baseball. Is that surprising? I found it a bit surprising, but maybe I shouldn't have. Certainly soccer is popular, but apparently not nearly so popular as baseball.

South Korea has a professional baseball league. Seoul itself has three teams. Many cities of any reasonable size have a team. And those teams all play full seasons.

Last night, we went to a game at Jamsil Baseball Stadium. It's in the sports complex which Seoul used when it hosted the Olympics (1988). It is right on the metro, making it so easy to get to. And it was both exactly the same and entirely different than watching a baseball game in the states.

The infield

The ballpark is nice. It's round and symmetric. None of the odd shapes of an outfield that you find in old jewel box stadiums. It has the big board over centerfield where they show the lineups and who is at bat. There are scoreboards all around. There are ads on the field. The seats are in different colors and you buy your tickets for one of the color zones. We were in the red zone on the third base side. Too far out to realistically expect a fly ball to make it to us. A couple times during the night, one was heading in the right direction, but didn't make nearly the distance.

Notice on their scoreboards they have runs, hits, errors, and bases on balls (walks)

The side makes a difference. South Korea isn't that big. So in any game, there are lots of fans from the away team in the stadium as well as the expected fans from the home team. The first base side of the stadium is the home team. The third base side is the away team. We arrived at about 5:15 for a game that began at 6:30. When we were buying our tickets, the ticket vendor asked if we wanted home or away and we said we didn't mind either. We just wanted to see baseball.

She sold us very good seats on the away team side. And that was fine with us. So we were rooting for the Hanwha Eagles based in the city of Daejeon. They were facing off with the LG Twins, based, as you probably guessed by virtue of being the home team, in Seoul. (Every team seems to be associated with one of the big Korean corporations, in this case Hanwha and LG.) All around us were people in Eagles jerseys or caps. Many had two little plastic bats that you could slap together for percussion in lieu of clapping. That will be important later.

Here are some of the similarities. The game is the same game. It has the same rules as baseball in the United States. They use a designated hitter, so the pitcher never has to bat. There are also pinch hitters allowed and when you substitute for someone, that person can't come back. Just as it is at home. So it was really fun to see a professional game again.

Other similarities that were outside of the baseball game itself. They rake the fields between innings and sometimes there is a raking vehicle, but not after every inning. There are occasional activities on the big screen including a kiss cam. That is apparently controversial. In South Korea, public displays of affection are shunned. There are some in the country who don't approve of the kiss cam. But they still do it. We saw three couples highlighted. One was a father and his young daughter up on his shoulders. They were cute. One couple kissed more or less like normal. And when one of the couples was on the screen, the woman covered her face so she couldn't be seen, totally embarrassed. The man kissed her anyway, though whether he was kissing lips or wrists is anyone's guess.

There are concessions sold in the concourse. But also, there are some vendors who walk through the stands. The beer vendor carries a cylinder on his back and a bunch of cups at his side. But we didn't see many food vendors walking through. You don't buy peanuts and cracker jacks. You buy fried chicken. Yes, there are other choices too.

The backpack of beer, Cass beer.

But I want to get into what made it such a different experience. That's the amazing part, and the different foods are just the smallest piece of it. South Korea has an immense cheer culture. Each player on each team has his own song. So when a particular player is up to bat, everyone who is supporting his team sings his song. There are even cheerleaders to lead us in doing so. There are two concrete platforms up in the stands, one on the third base side for the away team cheerleaders and one of the first base side for the home team cheerleaders. The cheerleaders come out when their team is up to bat and they go somewhere, I don't know where, when their team is on defense. It's probably good that they go somewhere, because they are wearing very little for the temperature of an April evening in Seoul. At least they are jumping and bouncing and kicking a lot. So those legs clad in nothing but tights hopefully don't get too cold.

The cheerleaders' platform

If you are seated in the orange section, which is just behind the cheerleader platforms, you definitely sing every single at bat. But even in the red section, everyone was singing the song for that batter. (And using their two little plastic bats for the percussive strikes.) Okay, not everyone. Alrica and I didn't know the songs. But we did our best after a few repetitions.

At one point there was a song where the fans on the home side were waving the flashlights of their phones.

There are no long delays in the game. Between innings, they only allow 2 minutes, unless there is a pitching change, and then it is 4 minutes. There are no long TV timeouts. So the game keeps moving.

Half an inning later, everyone on the away side waved their flashlights, including Alrica.

A difference within the game had to do with pitchers. They replace pitchers more often than is usually done in MLB games. I think we saw five different pitchers for each team during the game. One pitcher was in for I think four pitches. I guess they just run through the bullpen.

I was very impressed. I think what struck me is something that I feel America has lost in its professional sports (with the possible exception of minor leagues.) In South Korea, the game is so much about the fans. The fans are supposed to have a great time. And they do. The audio system plays the right song for each player. The game doesn't have long delays. And all the cheering and exuberance is so good-natured. It is very much not screaming at the other side or screaming at your own players when they make an error. Sure, when an Eagle made an error, which did happen once, everyone on our side of the field said "Ooooo!" But nobody booed him or screamed out at the players. It's supposed to be fun and it is fun.

And the prices are reasonable so the fans can afford it. Seats in the red zone were 19,000 South Korean won, which is around 13 U.S. dollars. For three hours or more of entertainment, I think that is a very fair price.

It was an exciting game too. The first three innings were great defensive games. Good pitching, good fielding. But in the fourth inning, our pitcher (see how I have taken on my role as an Eagles fan?) our pitcher got into trouble. The Twins got a couple hits on him. Then he started throwing junk and he walked two batters in the inning. One of those walks even led to a run being scored. Two other runs were scored on a good hit. Already the Twins has put four runs on the board (there was one run before the trouble I mentioned in the bottom of the fourth.) So the Eagles called for a pitching change. The relief pitcher was taking over in a bad position. Two runners on base and only one out. He did pretty well, but the Twins scored one more run before he could get out of the inning.

In the top of the fifth, the Eagles managed one run. But the seventh innning was the decisive one. The Eagles were hot in the top of the seventh. The Twins used two different pitchers during that half inning and the Eagles scored four more runs, tying the game.

At this point, we noted another difference. In South Korea, there is not a seventh inning stretch. But Alrica and I sang Take Me Out to the Ballgame for tradition's sake, at least our traditions.

Unfortunately for the Eagles, the Twins answered the four runs in the top of the inning with one run in the bottom on the seventh. This meant that the Twins were in the lead 6 to the Eagles' 5. And that's how it ended too. The eighth inning went pretty quickly. And in the ninth, the first two outs were fast. It finally looked like maybe the Eagles could get a running over home plate. But then the batter popped it up to rightfield and with a clean catch, the game was over. Like baseball at home, if the home team is winning when you finish the top of the ninth inning, you don't play the bottom of the inning. The Eagles had already lost.

Am I now a die-hard Hanwha Eagles fan? No, I am not. But I'm a pretty big fan of how South Korea makes a baseball game into an event.