Friday night and it was time for a bit more baseball with Hanwha Eagles visiting Jamsil for the first of their three games with LG Twins. As usual Hanwha are having a pretty poor season with them currently sitting seventh of the eight teams in the rankings. LG are doing a little better in fifth, two wins behind local rivals Doosan Bears in the fight for the fourth play-off place.
As far as recent form goes, both teams were on the wrong end of a 9-1 stuffing the previous evening, LG away to SK Wyverns and Hanwha at home to Lotte Giants. That’s not really the standard of performance that will have the fans flocking to the ground and so Jen and I thought that we’d just take our time and walk there.
We got in at about twenty past seven with three innings gone and LG Twins already ahead by four runs to nil. The stadium was a lot busier than I’d imagined, with far more Hanwha fans than I’d have thought their position and current form would have warranted. Perhaps LG’s 9-1 defeat the previous evening had given them a bit of hope that they might pick up a win. It still took me ten minutes to get the beer in though due to a combination of queueing at the wrong level and then being stuck behind people paying for a packet of dried octopus with a debit card.
Ahn Seung Min was the starting pitcher for Hanwha and by the time he disappeared at the end of the fifth LG had increased their lead to 5-0.
Ahn Seung Min - Hanwha Eagles
The American Ben Jukich started for LG and was pretty impressive rattling through eight innings with barely a hit and no runs against him. The game was as good as over when with just the one innings remaining his boss gave him a ‘job and knock’ and he was allowed to nip off home early.
Ben Jukich - LG Twins
Other foreign interest came in the form of Karim Garcia, who seems to be the Robbie Savage of baseball. He picked up a seven game ban whilst playing with Lotte Giants last season for giving an umpire a bit more slaver than is apparently acceptable and despite scoring sixty six runs in Major League Baseball his main claim to fame in America seems to be a fight that he had with eight time All-Star Pedro Martinez.
"Karim Garcia, who's Karim Garcia?"
Garcia behaved himself on this occasion though and in the eighth he looked as if he had managed to belt one into next door’s garden. Unfortunately for the stroppy Mexican it was caught a foot or so from the top of the boundary wall, just in front of a couple of hundred office workers all sat together on some team-building bonding exercise.
"Stand up if you'd rather be at home with the family"
Hanwha’s fans kept up their support all evening despite their team dropping too many catches and missing more run outs than they would have been happy with. The game ended at about half past nine with LG eventually knocking up eight runs without reply, giving Hanwha their second eight run loss in twenty four hours and allowing LG to move a little closer to a play-off spot.
Trail of the Lion King 
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