Trail of the Lion King

Baseball in December? There’s something not quite right there. It was way back in October when I’d watched Samsung Lions clinch the Korean Series to bring the KBO season to an end. Even then it felt as if it had all gone on for a bit too long. It’s a game for watching on sunny afternoons and balmy evenings with a few cans of ice-cold Asahi. Cricket weather, not football weather, that’s how it should be.

Jen and I were in Jeonju for the weekend and as we weren’t staying too far from the Jeonju Baseball stadium we had a wander past it on the way for some breakfast. You know, just in case there was something going on. We’d had a look inside a month or so ago and on that occasion had just missed seeing a game because it had been rained off. Well this time we got lucky, the local tournament that had been going on last time had overrun and we arrived just in time for the final day of  matches.

They had all of the kit.

The only seats that were available were behind the plate. They were probably the only seats that were useable as the remainder of the stands had more weeds in them than a cannabis farm. There weren’t too many other people there and those that were watching looked as if they were either playing in the next game themselves or had come to watch someone they knew in action.

No cheerleaders for this lot.

It was early in the fifth innings when we took our seats and the team in white, Withus, were leading the team in black, Nosong, by five runs to one. The standard wasn’t that great, even for this level and there were plenty of dropped catches and bases gained after wayward throws.

A Withus batter prepares to face another 50kmph ball.

Withus looked to be the more talented team and over the next couple of innings increased their lead to eleven-one.

This fella rattled through his pitches, probably keen to get back in the warm.

We didn’t hang about for too long, half an hour or so was enough in the cold and it wasn’t as if the game was a finely poised thriller. It was nice to have seen some actual baseball take place in the stadium though, even if it would have been that much better on a summer’s evening.

This entry was posted on December 21, 2011 at 5:18 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.