Trail of the Lion King

After watching last weeks game between LG Twins and Samsung Lions I was back at the Jamsil Stadium on Sunday afternoon to see the Twins take on Lotte Giants. First though Jen and I went to the circus. It wasn’t, as I’d mentioned previously, a real circus with elephants and lions but that Cirque du Soleil thing, where the focus is more on acrobats. That’s fine with me though. I can watch girls in leotards demonstrating their flexibility for a couple of hours if I have to.

Cirque du Soleil

The performers were certainly a lot more athletic than the acrobats that I remember seeing at the circus as a kid. Then you would tend to get an ageing husband and wife trapeze act where the main excitement came from wondering if they might have had an argument beforehand that would lessen their efforts to catch each other.

I remember going to see Robert Brothers Circus when I was about six. Mind you, they didn’t have elephants and lions either. They were a little more low-budget and had pigs that would run around the ring and jump through hoops. They did, however, have a boxing kangaroo that seemed quite prepared to take on and knock out all-comers. I tried to persuade my Dad to go down and lamp it but apparently he had just had his tea.

The most vivid memory of that day though is dropping my bar of Turkish Delight through a gap in the seats and on to the grass below. I’ve gone off Turkish Delight these days so got an ice cream at the Cirque du Soleil interval instead. I’ve learnt my lesson though and I kept a tight grip on it.

All this and pigs too.

The timing of the events worked in our favour and after emerging blinking into the sunlight from the big top at half past four we had half an hour to get ourselves baseball tickets, chicken and beer. Despite the sizeable crowd we managed it, opting for eight thousand won tickets in the outfield so that we could take full advantage of the sunshine.

Unfortunately a lot of other people had gone for the same idea and there were only single seats left. Or rather, anything other than single seats were occupied by bags, coats, boxes of chicken or strategically placed newspapers. All of the people that we asked were adamant that the seats were being used by an absent friend who would be returning at any moment.

We walked the length of the outfield without success. I was a little annoyed by this point, but thought ‘sod it’, the obvious solution being to forego a bit of sunshine and get seats in the main stand instead. The tickets are cheap enough for paying twice to not really matter and so we came back through the gate declining a handstamp for re-admission on the way through.

We queued for a couple of minutes at the ticket window before the women behind the glass informed us that every area of the ground apart from the outfield was sold out. At the risk of sounding like Victor Meldrew, I couldn’t believe it. The main stand was at best a quarter full, there was no way that it could be sold out. She insisted though and faced with not seeing the game and without the handstamps that would have re-admitted us, I was forced to buy another two tickets for the outfield. The bloke on the gate looked a bit surprised to see us back but probably knew better than to comment.

An outfield full of bags, coats and fried chicken boxes

Of course when we reached the top of the steps there were fewer empty seats than there had been five minutes earlier, some of them actually now occupied by people rather newspapers. The solution came to me a moment later and five minutes after it should have done. If the main stand was sold out but was still at least half empty it meant that a lot of the tickets would have been bought by touts.

We made our way back down the steps and through the exit gate again. I made sure that I didn’t catch the eye of the bloke with the handstamps. It was bad enough leaving the once before the start, but twice? I don’t imagine that has happened too often.

We made our way around to the area by the subway and sure enough, the touting grannies had an ample supply. We got a pair, paying a three thousand won premium on the face value of each twelve thousand won ticket.

It took us about twenty minutes to negotiate the queues at the gate and find our seats, which were actually quite good, directly above the plate. So, to recap. That was six tickets in total at an overall cost of sixty two thousand won. Whatever. As I cracked open the first can of the day it all seemed worthwhile.

Shim Soo Chang was the starting pitcher again for LG and he survived until the fifth innings before getting the hook after tiring a little and being twatted for three runs. Song Seung Joon started for the Giants and conceded just the one run before also being replaced toward the end of the fifth.

Song Seong Joon - Lotte Giants

The Lotte fans seemed to be enjoying themselves as usual and in addition to the supermarket carrier bags on their heads, they had a chant directed at the home fans that I’m pretty sure was along the lines of  “Shut Up Boy”.

Lotte Giants fans giving the opposition a bit of stick.

They enjoyed themselves even more as Lotte added another run in the seventh to make it 4-1 and that’s the way it finished.

This entry was posted on May 1, 2011 at 11:04 pm and is filed under Baseball. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.