If I walk past a sports ground of any kind, I’ll always try and have a look inside just in case there is something going on. This was one of those times when I got lucky. Jen and I had gone to Suwon to watch Suwon City in the National League and we had got there an hour and a half before kick-off. Next to Suwon’s Civil Stadium is the Suwon Baseball Stadium, which is the former home of the now defunct KBO team Hyundai Unicorns. The Unicorns were one of the most successful sides in Korean baseball, winning the Championship four times before relocating to Mokdong, changing owners and ending up as the rather less successful Nexen Heroes.
As we walked around outside, we could see players arriving in their kits and with noises coming from inside the stadium, I was fairly sure that something was going on. We walked through the main entrance, gambled on turning left and a moment or two later found ourselves in the away team dugout. Nobody seemed surprised by us appearing there and I took the opportunity to get a few photographs from pitch-side.
I don't think we were supposed to be here.
We re-traced our steps and took the corridor that had been to our right. This brought us out at pitch-side once more, but further along and not far from the plate. A bloke gave us a programme and we made our way up into the posh seats with the tables. There weren‘t many fans there and it’s possible that we were the only ones not to be either playing or watching a family member play.
It's seen busier days.
A quick glance at the the programme revealed that this was the first day of a multi-team tournament that was scheduled to run throughout the Summer. We had arrived in the first innings of the third game of the day, a contest between KPC and Kogas-Tech. I assumed from the names that they were company teams, although I suppose that maybe it was just a sponsorship arrangement.
KPC, in blue, were leading Kogas-Tech who were in red by three runs to nil. The standard wasn’t too bad, certainly better than the University game I’d seen three weeks or so earlier. Whilst there were plenty of sneaked bases, the pitching was generally on target and the batters were capable of giving the ball a fair crack. We didnt see any home runs but there were some big hits.
The view from our seats.
We watched for just over an hour before it was time to leave for the football game. I’d enjoying sitting quietly in the sunshine in a stadium that a few years ago would have been filled with twenty thousand capacity crowds. The hour was sufficient time to see KPC take the four innings match by thirteen runs to two and give themselves a solid start to the tournament.
Trail of the Lion King 
April 19, 2012 at 1:23 am |
[…] one way in that was open and sat down behind home plate. As far as I could tell from the program, the game was part of a summer-long regional series. Pretty good. We’ve certainly seen games with a […]