Trail of the Lion King

This is an unusual post as I normally only write about sporting events or hikes. I think though that if someone is happy to read about obscure football or baseball teams then they may very well have an interest in stadiums as well, particularly places where nobody plays anymore. If you don’t, feel free to skip this one, I’ll never know.

Jen and I were spending the weekend in Jeonju and we’d already done some hiking in Moaksan Provincial Park the previous day before watching Jeonbuk lose the Asian Champions League final on penalties to the Qatari team, Al Sadd. Our plan for the Sunday revolved around watching a basketball game in the afternoon and so we had some spare time in the morning.

Our hotel was close to the bus station and so wasn’t too far from the old Jeonju football stadium. Next door to that is Jeonju Baseball Stadium. As we had a bit of time to fill we detoured that way to have a look around. A gate was slightly ajar and so we went in.

View from the cheap seats.

I’m pretty sure that when I wandered past the place last year there was a poster advertising some sort of tournament. It looked though as if nobody had set foot in the place for years. The seats were dirty and there were three-foot tall weeds growing in the stands. I wasn’t sure if the grass in the outfield had been mowed in recent months or had just died off.

View of the cheap seats.

I don’t think that Jeonju has ever staged KBO matches and so the ten thousand capacity would always have been way too many for any of the local games that will have been played there.

The home dugout.

I quite like walking around abandoned places, it’s a bit like garden creeping for grown-ups although without the threat of getting a boot up your arse if you get caught. Except you aren’t in a garden and you aren’t creeping. Apart from that though it’s just the same, but better because you are in a sports stadium. I stood on the pitcher’s mound and then at the plate where the batter does his stuff.

View from the plate.

Jen spotted a banner that was advertising a tournament for this year and surprisingly there was a game scheduled for that day. A few minutes after we had started mooching around a bloke with a baseball hat wandered in. We had a word with him and he confirmed that there was a tournament for local teams taking place but the overnight rain had caused that day’s fixtures to be cancelled. How unlucky is that? The competition continues until the 27th November so I’m toying with the idea of turning up then in the hope of seeing some action.

This entry was posted on November 20, 2011 at 10:57 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.