Trail of the Lion King

On the way into the football game at Chuncheon Stadium the previous day, Jen and I decided to have a look around the baseball stadium next door. When we got close we were surprised to hear a game going on inside and so we went in through the main entrance to see what was happening.

It turns out that we had arrived on the penultimate day of  sixty-four team tournament for Gangwon baseball teams. We picked up a programme and it looked as if most of them were of a similar standard to the fellas that I’ve seen playing on a Sunday morning down by the Han River.

We watched for a while from the VIP lounge and then from the players dugout.

Gangneung Shinwoo players waiting their turn to bat.

It was a smallest baseball stadium that I’ve seen so far, with no seats in the outfield and a ten thousand capacity main stand. Gangneung Shinwoo were winning their semi-final against a team in blue and we decided to return the next day to watch them in the final. The programme reckoned that the closing ceremony was at 4pm so we concluded that the final would probably start sometime between one and two o’clock.

We had just about doubled the attendance.

The next day we woke early on the floor of the shed we were staying in on Jungdo Island. It was advertised as a cabin but, as I may have mentioned in a previous post, cabins have beds. This place just had a floor. It hadn’t been the most comfortable of nights and the state of my back was what any orthopedic consultant worth his salt would no doubt have described as ‘knacked’.

After breakfast we hired a modified golf cart and rode around the island looking for wildlife. We soon  spotted a few black squirrels, although they weren’t interested in the peanuts that we threw for them.

It was like a red squirrel, but blacker.

Later we found some yellow spiders, most of which didn’t seem that much smaller than the squirrels.

Despite its size I was confident that a single swipe with a Gazette would be sufficient.

The driving around looking for wildlife reminded me of being on safari in South Africa the previous summer, although without the undoubted thrill of being able to wave a rifle around. Coincidently I’ve just been informed by email that the mounted head of the blesbok that I shot during the World Cup will finally be finished this month. All I have to do now is work out where I’m going to put it.

It's no wonder the Jungdo squirrels didn't get too close.

We got the ferry off the island later that morning and took a taxi to Dak Galbi Street for an early lunch. No surprise what they served there. We couldn’t see a restaurant with an endorsement from comedian Kang Ho Dong, which is pretty much the equivalent of a Kitemark over here and so we just picked the first one that had chairs instead. Kang has recently been in the news over here after his tax affairs were announced as being under investigation. No doubt we will shortly be seeing his cardboard cut-out giving us a cheesy thumbs-up outside of every accountant’s office in town.

Kang Ho Dong

Another short taxi ride to the stadium where there were dozens of cars parked alongside the road and a couple of hundred people milling about. Unfortunately they were there for a cycle race and not for the baseball. We went into the stadium via the players entrance again and watched a couple of balls from the dugout. The team in pink, Gangneung Shinwoo were playing and so must have closed out yesterday’s semi-final as expected.

We made our way upstairs and were just selecting a VIP seat with a table when both teams ran towards the centre of pitch, lined up and shook hands. Game over. Hmmm. So, what next? Nothing apparently, apart from the players celebrating with their families, fringe players taking the opportunity to throw a few balls on the pitch and the dozen or so spectators packing their picnic lunches away. It turns out that the game had actually started at eleven o’clock and that was it for the day.

That's all folks.

We loitered for a few minutes and then walked back to the Jungdo ferry terminal where we got a taxi to the intercity bus terminal for the ride back to Dong Seoul. I couldn’t resist taking a picture of this fella waiting for his bus.

I think discovering that Blackadder 5 is currently being filmed in Korea was well worth the glare he gave me.

This entry was posted on September 28, 2011 at 11:14 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.