Trail of the Lion King

It’s been more than five weeks since I’ve been to a baseball game due to a combination of holiday, rain and sell-out crowds. I don’t mind missing games if it’s because I’m back in the UK but when games are rained off more often than they take place then it gets a bit frustrating.

On one of the occasions when the weather didn’t intervene Jen and I wandered down to the Jamsil stadium only to find the game sold out. Yes, really sold out. There weren’t even any touts with tickets. It’s rare that I’ve ever not got into a game that I’d wanted to, even cup finals. In fact, the only time I can remember walking away from a stadium whilst the match went on without me is a French football game from about ten years ago.

My son Tom and I had been camping near Bayonne and had driven up to Bordeaux to see their game with Paris Saint Germain. We’d done the same a year earlier and watched Dugarry run the show for the home team. Little did I know then that the Frenchman would score against the Boro for Birmingham a couple of years afterwards or that former Middlesbrough player Andy Todd would have one of the most memorable days of his Blackburn career by getting sent off for booting Dugarry up the arse. Welcome to England Christophe.

He's taller these days.

This time though the star attraction was to be one of the visiting players, a young Brazilian called Ronaldinho. The area around the stadium was a lot busier than it had been the previous year and, as with the recent baseball game, there wasn’t a tout to be seen. We hung around for twenty minutes until the streets were deserted and then drove back to Bayonne. As the game ended goalless and Ronaldhino missed the game through injury, it wasn’t too much of a disappointment in hindsight.

The weather was fine last Tuesday though and after a weekend of rain I just wanted to get out of the apartment and see a bit of sport. I didn’t want to chance another sell-out so I got the subway and was outside the Jamsil stadium no more than ten minutes after the start of the game. I spotted a tout and as I wasn’t in the mood for arseing about I took a seat in the main stand off him for twenty thousand won. That’s around twice face value and about twelve quid. It’s only once every five weeks though.

Doosan Bears, who were entertaining Lotte Giants, haven’t been having the best of seasons. They have recently moved up into fifth position, just behind local rivals LG Twins in the last of the play-off spots. Lotte Giants have been having a worse time though and look likely to be off on their holidays the day after the regular season finishes.

I took my seat up in the main stand with the opening Doosan innings eight balls old and with two players out. To make matters worse for them Lotte already had two runs on the board. Song Seung Joon was pitching for the Giants and it didn’t take him long to bring the Bears first innings to a close.

Song Seung Joon - Lotte Giants

Things got a bit better for the Bears when it was their turn to bat again. Choi Joon Seok just missed out on a home run when he managed to hit the wall below the scoreboard. It was enough to get him to second base though and it allowed Kim Dong Joo to get home and pull a run back.

Kim Dong Joo - Doosan Bears

Kim Dong Joo is pretty popular with the home fans. It’s his fourteenth season with the Bears though so it’s not too surprising. He’s been a part of the South Korean baseball team for a while too, with gold medals from a few Asian Games and one from the Beijing Olympics.

A  couple of minutes later Choi Joon Seok got his reward for the big hit  by scurrying home to level the score. He’s a popular fella too with the home fans, possibly I imagine because of his unathletic frame as much as his big hitting.

Choi Joon Seok - Doosan Bears

The scores remained level until the fifth when the starting pitcher for the Bears Lee Yong Chan gave up his third run. Another followed in the sixth innings and that was the end of him. He’s a pitcher who is normally used to close a game so I suspect that he was probably worn out by then.

Lee Yong Chan - Doosan Bears

By this stage of the game the Lotte fans had got their orange supermarket bags out and were brightening up the stadium by wearing them on their heads.

Old school 'airbag' style.

There’s a new fashion this year though, as a lot of women, mainly women anyway, have taken to twisting the bag to form a pair of what I presume would described in the style magazines and on the Paris catwalks as ‘Plastic bag bat ears’.

It's how the cool kids are wearing them this season.

And for those of you interested in the singing rather than the fashion, I can report that the Lotte fans still direct that old favourite ‘Shut Up Boy’ at the rival fans, whilst I’m pretty sure that a couple of the other chants were ‘We Hate Ramyun, and ‘Walnuts and Peanuts’. The vocal support paid off for Lotte as their team added another couple of runs in the eight to win the game 6-2.

This entry was posted on July 13, 2011 at 3:42 am 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.