Trail of the Lion King

One of the things that I’m trying to do this year is to see more baseball outside of the eight team top-level KBO League. Usually that involves stumbling across a run-down stadium in a one-horse town and then hoping that some sort of local tournament is taking place. To be fair, it’s an approach that has worked reasonably well so far.

My latest discovery though, is the Futures League. It’s basically a reserve league for the KBO clubs, supplemented by the Police and Army teams. Like most reserve leagues, it allows young players the opportunity to press their case for a place in the proper team whilst those recovering from injuries can get back to full fitness in an environment where winning isn’t necessarily the main focus.

The appeal to me is that they don’t play the games in the usual stadiums and so it’s chance to visit some smaller venues with virtually nobody there. What’s so good about that? Not sure really, although there’s definitely an element of ticking places off lists and it’s quite nice sometimes to watch something without a load of strangers making a racket.

Anyway, Jen and I had been watching a couple of football matches in Cheonan the day before. Afterwards we caught the KTX to Daegu, which is the nearest big station to Gyeongsan. Gyeongsan being the place where we intended to watch the Samsung Lions second team take on their KIA Tigers counterparts the following day.

There are always plenty of places to stay in the areas around stations and the combination of neon palm trees and onion domes on the roof was sufficient to draw us in to the thirty-five thousand won per night Paradise Motel.

Paradise.

Just in case the single free condom in the complimentary toiletry pack wasn’t enough, they had thoughtfully provided a vending machine full of them right next to the reception window.

Something for the weekend, sir?

The room itself was fine with a big tv, computer and as far as I could see no hairs belonging to the previous occupants of the bed. There wasn’t much of a view, with the narrow alleyway beyond the window obscured by bars and barbed wire. But, it’s Daegu city centre and there wouldn’t have been much of a view regardless. Fortunately we were only one floor up and so we probably wouldn’t have needed to use the window as an escape route if a guest had tried to burn the place down in protest at having to pay for a second condom.

The view.

At noon the next day we hailed a taxi for the journey to Gyeongsan. Jen, who speaks very good Korean, was extremely specific with the instructions to the driver. She told him the town that we wanted to go to, Gyeongsan, then she told him the area of the town. He nodded and grinned. Happy that he knew the town and the area of the town, she then told him that when we got to Gyeongsan it was the baseball stadium that we wanted to go to. He repeated back the word ‘baseball’ and set off.

Twenty minutes later we arrived at the Daegu Baseball Stadium, home of the Samsung Lions and venue for a first-team game that day between Samsung and Nexen. Jen explained it all again to him, re-emphasising that the name of the town that we wanted to go to was Gyeongsan and pointing out that the name of the town that we had asked him to go to differed from the one that we were in.

Not Gyeongsan.

He seemed baffled, as if the idea that other towns could have baseball stadiums as well was a concept too bizarre to dwell upon. Then he suggested that this game would be better. When we politely insisted upon the original plan he seemed to mark us down as trouble makers and quoted what I suspect he felt was a prohibitive thirty-five thousand won fare to take us to the place that he’d already agreed to take us to twenty minutes earlier. That’s fine. Just drive.

Half an hour later, we arrived in Gyeongsan. The driver behaved as if he had been caught up in a tornado and then deposited in a random town hundreds of miles away. He kangarooed along the main street, accosting random passers-by with a variety of questions that no doubt included whether he would need a visa and if the water was safe to drink. We paid him up and left him to what was likely to be an uncomfortable few hours driving around in circles before he chanced upon the road home.

Fortunately the next cab driver knew exactly where the baseball stadium was and a few minutes later we were there. It was ten minutes or so after the scheduled one o’clock start time, but that’s not a big deal in a game that can last for three or four hours. It wasn’t as if it was likely to sell out.

The stadium looked pretty new and seemed more like a training facility than a baseball park in its own right. There were a few players standing around outside and three or four fellas using cameras with large lenses to take photographs. I didn’t want to miss any more of the game so we went up to the seats. There weren’t many people watching, maybe ten in total, so perhaps the Futures League isn’t much of a draw.

It was certainly quieter than a KBO game.

I had a look at the scoreboard and discovered that Samsung were leading Kia by two runs to one, in the eighth innings. Eighth? It was ten past one. Ten minutes after the scheduled start-time. Something wasn’t right.

Eighth innings action.

There were some Samsung players sat nearby and one of them asked me why we were there. Why indeed, I thought, there’s no easy answer to that one.  I asked him about the change to the start time and he told me that they had started two hours earlier than intended because they had the following day off and they wanted to get away as soon as possible. Marvellous.

Almost as many players as fans in the crowd.

Ten minutes after we had arrived it was all over with Samsung holding on to their two-one lead. As we wandered out we hopped into our third taxi of the last half hour and got the driver to take us back to the Daegu baseball stadium that we’d been at an hour earlier. So far the Futures League seems to be a lot of travelling and not very much baseball.

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.

After turning up at Bucheon three weeks ago for a football match that took place elsewhere, I had been looking to go back there and actually see a game. They were at home again last Saturday with a 7pm kick-off and the lateish kick-off gave me a bit of spare time in the afternoon to watch some baseball first.

I had a walk along to Jamsil where LG Twins were taking on Nexen Heroes in another of the pre-season games. As I approached the stadium I wondered whether or not the game was on. I couldn’t see anyone in the seats, which was surprising with only twenty minutes to go before the scheduled one o’clock start.

When I got there though, there were plenty of people milling around outside and the old biddies who sell the food and drink were out in force.

Plenty of dried squid available.

It was free entry, but the outfield seats weren’t open. I took a seat in the away fan section near third base, just high enough up to be able to see over the top of the netting. There weren’t too many other people inside as the game started, but there were probably ten thousand or so in there by the time I left. It was a similar attendance to that of the game I’d seen the previous week at Cheongju, but there’s a big difference in atmosphere between ten thousand people in a twelve thousand capacity ground and the same number of people spread out in a stadium that holds thirty thousand.

The crowd at 1pm.

In last week’s game Nexen hadn’t managed a single run against Hanwha, but they were off the mark in the first innings in this one, with Yoo Han Joon getting the hit that allowed one of his team mates to get home. Yoo Han Joon seemed pretty unpopular with the home fans and was booed every time he walked to the plate. I’ve no idea what the issue was, as far as I can see he isn’t an ex-LG player, nor has he turned out for their rivals Doosan Bears. Perhaps he’s just one of those fellas, like Robbie Savage or Craig Bellamy, that you feel obliged to boo, pantomime-style, whenever you see them. Fair enough.

Booooooooo.

The Nexen celebrations for their run and indeed anything else were hampered by their lack of cheerleaders. Perhaps they were economising and saving them for the proper start of the season. One of their fans was happy to fill the gap though and despite the absence of any music or a megaphone, he managed to lead his fellow supporters in a variety of chants. I liked the way that he generally kept one eye on what was happening on the field whilst still managing to cajole some noise from the Nexen faithful.

Not the usual gratuitous cheerleader picture.

Nexen kept their lead until the third innings and then fell a run behind in the fourth. In the break between innings I had a glance around at the people sat nearby. The old bloke to my right was drinking yellow coloured liquid from a jam jar. I’d like to think that he hadn’t mixed up his refreshments with a urine sample. There was a man behind me using the sort of lens on his camera that you could photograph a moon landing with and of course, the obligatory couple in matching clothes, this time showing their love for Nexen as well as each other.

That's commitment.

There were a lot of families in the crowd too and some of them had brought children that were far too young to really appreciate what was going on. A pre-season game is an ideal situation though to bring a young kid. There’s plenty of room, it’s free to get in and other fans aren’t going to get arsey about a toddler running around.

When my son was three or four years old I would take him to Boro reserve games at Ayresome Park. He’d watch the football for a while but then would be more interested in running up and down, getting some sweets and then going home at half-time. I didn’t mind, I’d got to see forty five minutes or so of football and we’d had an night off from watching Thomas the Tank Engine. Nobody else in the crowd was inconvenienced at those games as the place was empty. Mind you, if I recall correctly the crowds for the first team matches weren’t much bigger in those Lennie Lawrence days.

Nexen regained their lead with two runs in the fifth before the home side responded with a hit that ended up in the empty outfield seats and tied the game at three each.

The first home run of the day.

By the start of the eighth it was still three all and time for me to leave to catch the subway to Bucheon for the football. I had a look on the internet later and someone had got a fourth run to take the game. I can’t remember which team it was unfortunately, maybe Nexen. Anyway, it’s not important.

That’s it for my pre-season baseball, next time I go it will be the real thing. Or maybe not, I’ve got plans this year to watch a fair bit of second tier baseball in the Futures League. So it will be up and coming hopefuls battling it out alongside grizzled old pro’s returning from injury or loss of form. The stadiums appear to be located in towns whose existence is rarely even acknowledged by the guide books and I’m expecting the crowds to consist almost exclusively of coaching staff, agents and families. There’ll probably be an old bloke or two drinking their own piss as well.

The baseball season doesn’t start properly until April, although the first pre-season friendlies will be underway next week. Even so, if I’m walking past a baseball stadium I’ll always have a look and a listen to see if there is anything going on.

As I passed the Jamsil stadium on my way to the Seoul United football game taking place nearby I could hear voices from inside. I was fairly sure that they were from inside the stadium and not the ones from inside my head, mainly because they didn’t keep telling me to “Grow up, sonny“.

I walked about halfway around the outside of the stadium until I came to the main entrance. There were a lot of people milling about, some dressed in full baseball kit, others clutching boxes of chicken and six packs of beer. I tried to get in but was stopped by a security guard. As a few of the people were leaving and getting onto coaches, it looked to me as if it was some sort of pre-season jolly, possibly for fans, maybe for a junior team. I left them to it and went to have a look at the Olympic Stadium and see if anything was going on there.

Something was definitely going on.

A little later I was walking around the other side of the baseball stadium and I noticed a couple of blokes standing around on the next level up. I went up the ramp and after spotting that they had staff badges on, asked them if there was a game on. When they confirmed that there was, I asked if I could go in and watch. Unlike the earlier security man, they couldn’t give a toss and so I headed into the seating area behind the plate.

View from the posh seats.

It looked like a kid’s game was going on and after picking up a programme from a pile near the entrance I learned that it was a University tournament. I settled down in one of the posh seats with a table directly behind the plate and watched Yonsei University take on Konkuk University.

I’d never sat in a seat that close to the action at Jamsil before, those seats are always sold out long before I get around to buying a ticket, but it turns out that I hadn’t been missing much. Whilst it was great to be so close to the action, the netting that stops you being hit between the eyes by a misplaced shot was just too intrusive. I much prefer to watch from a distance where you don’t notice it as much.

There was plenty of debris lying around, mainly empty beer cans and fried chicken bones. Just what you would expect from students really, they probably scattered them around to make the large stadium seem less intimidating and more like their bedsits.

Bloody students.

The standard of play was as bad as their housekeeping and I wondered if anyone on a sporting scholarship was in detention. Some of the pitches bounced, whilst others flew over the catcher’s head. Runs were gained by stealing bases rather than hitting the ball and it was clear that the formative years of these students had been spent in maths hagwons rather than outside in the fresh air.

Konkuk look for their first run.

It was a pleasant way to pass a bit of time though, and the two hundred strong crowd seemed to be enjoying themselves. For those of you who are interested in results it was the highest scoring baseball game I’ve ever been to despite there being no possibility of anyone hitting a home run unless an eagle swooped down and carried the ball off and dropped it over the wall. By the end of the third innings Yonsei had built up a 23-0 lead. As the games were being contested over just four innings, it was looking  fairly desperate for Konkuk at that stage. Still, it will give them a feel for what it’s like not to start their dissertations until the night before they are due to be handed in.

To the delight of their fans though, Konkuk got a run in their final innings, eventually going down by twenty-five runs to one.

Give that lad a House Point.

With the pre-season games still a week away, and the season proper not starting until next month it was nice to see some baseball earlier than I could have expected, despite the standard. By way of a bonus, as I was leaving I caught the eye of the security bloke who had turned me away earlier and gave him the smuggest grin I manage.

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 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.

The Korean Series is played over the best of seven games. This year the first two games took place at the Lions stadium in Daegu and the next two at Munhak, home of the Wyverns.

After that, if necessary, everyone moves to Jamsil Stadium for the remaining games. As the score stood at three-one to Samsung Lions after the first four games that meant that there would definitely be at least one game at Jamsil.

That was certainly good news in that it gave me the opportunity to see another play-off game. However the downside was that the tickets were sold out and the 6pm start meant that I wouldn’t be able to get there until three quarters of an hour into the game. By that time it was possible that all of the old granny touts would be sat at home working out exactly how many new sun visors they could buy with the profits from their ticket sales.

Now, I don’t suppose that too many ladies read this blog. Actually not too many blokes do either, but there’s probably a balance in their favour. However, if any ladies are reading, can I give you a bit of relationship advice? I know, I’m not really agony aunt material, but trust me this stuff is worth passing on. If you want to get in your fella’s good books, don’t make him go shopping with you or give him lists of DIY jobs to do around the house. Despite what you may want to believe, that rarely works. Instead you should get yourself along to the baseball stadium on your way home from work, find a tout and then pay him more than twice face value to buy your bloke a ticket for the big game. That’s what Jen did and doing stuff like that is one of the reasons why she’s an absolute star.

So, ticket in hand I was in the stadium for quarter to seven. The second innings was just drawing to a close and the game was still scoreless. There were quite a few empty seats in the main section where the latecomers with allocated seats would no doubt be wandering in over the next hour or so. I was in the outfield section and as expected, it was packed. There were some seats that were occupied by coats and boxes of fried chicken but most had people in them. The aisles were full too and the walkway at the back was crammed with picnickers and fans stood up to three deep on the rail at some points. I made my way right around to the far corner and found a spot on the railing near to that big post that helps the officials determine if a ball has been hit behind or not.

I could watch the replays on this bloke's phone.

Samsung took the lead in the fourth innings when Kang Bong Gyu hit a solo home run straight into the Samsung fans to my right.

The Samsung players celebrate their home run.

Both sets of fans were impressive, but I think the Samsung fans just shaded it with their inflatable lions. It was a little more subdued where I was stood, which is probably just as well as I needed to limit my beer intake. It would have been just too difficult to fight my way through the crowds to get to the toilets and I’d have lost my position on the rail if I had.

Samsung Inflatable Lions

By the time we got to the ninth innings, Wyverns were still a run behind and Samsung closed the game out to take the Series 4-1.

Last man out.

That was the signal for the fireworks and the presentations. Most of the Wyvern fans stayed to applaud the winners which I thought was pretty decent of them. When you see the presentations at football finals in the UK half the stadium is empty before the players have even shook hands with each other, never mind picked up the cup.

There was a better display than they have on Bonfire night.

And so that brings the baseball season to an end. It’s been a good year where I’ve completed my tour of the KBO stadiums with visits to Gwangju and Gunsan as well as watching games between local sides at small stadiums in places like Chuncheon and Jeju. Next season I’ll be looking to get to some games at the second tier ‘Futures League’, where although there will be fewer fireworks and inflatable lions, there will probably be more chance of getting to sit down.

It’s almost the end of the baseball season and we are into what is apparently known as the Korean Series. Last season’s champions SK Wyverns qualified to play the team that finished top of this year’s standings, Samsung Lions, in a best of seven games finale.

Samsung had won the first two meetings at their Daegu stadium before the action moved north to Munhak, where SK Wyverns had pulled a game back the previous evening. I had to decide whether to go to this game or watch one of the division three football play-offs instead. If the weather forecast had been for rain I’d probably have gone to the football, but as it looked like a sunny day in the Incheon area I got the subway to the baseball instead.

I arrived at Munhak after a ninety minute subway journey and with still about hour to go before the scheduled two o’clock start. The game was sold out and I didn’t have a ticket, but as there are usually some touts kicking around, I wasn’t too concerned.

Lots of food, but no tickets.

I didn’t see anybody selling tickets as I left the subway and so I walked up to the stadium. There were lots of people getting there early but nobody seemed to have any spares for sale. I headed back towards the subway and spotted a bloke with a small handwritten sign. That generally means one of three things over here, he was buying, selling or offering to save my soul. I enquired further and it turned out that he was selling a single ticket with a face value of forty-five thousand won. I only had an hour so I didn’t ask about my prospects for the after-life.

Neither of us spoke much of the other’s language and so I pulled a fifty thousand won note from my wallet. He looked uneasy, so I got another one out. Twice face value didn’t seem unreasonable to me. This freaked him out a bit more and he made a big fuss of turning it down. I wasn’t sure if he was trying to strike a harder bargain at that point or whether he’d never actually seen a fifty thousand won note before and was worried I was trying to pay with money-off coupons for a pizza shop or something.

He very carefully took a five thousand won note from his pocket and made a big show of handing it over with the ticket before taking one of the fifty thousand won notes in my hand. A moment later I understood the reason for his caution as two plain clothes coppers came over and examined the ticket before asking me to confirm that I had paid exactly the face value and no more. Luckily for the Korean bloke I resisted the urge to tell them that I’d handed over a couple of hundred thousand won plus my phone, car keys and shoes. I’m pretty sure that they would have emptied his pockets and handed the contents to me before hauling him away to chokey barefoot.

Most tickets for Munhak are general admission, with just a small proportion of them being for allocated seating. As my ticket was one of the posh ones I didnt need to get inside early, but I did anyway.

My seat was in the Samsung Lions side of the ground, to the left of the plate and level with the pitcher. I was about four or five rows from the front. Most people would regard that as a very good seat with it being so close to the action, but not me. I don’t like the idea of watching the game through the netting that is there to stop you being smacked in the chops by a stray ball. I could have moved to the cheap seats but decided to stick with it. As much as anything I didn’t want to worry the bloke who had sold me the ticket by not being there when he arrived.

Samsung Lions fans

It was a decent seat for watching the warm-ups, which is handy I suppose when you get in so long before the start. I did wonder how specialised a job being a ‘warm-up’ pitcher is? The fella that was sending down the balls for Samsung Lions must have thrown far more than any pitcher playing in the game would do, albeit at a lower intensity. Did he then spend the rest of the afternoon tossing the ball back and forwards with the relief pitchers too? It seemed a lot of effort and not very much glory. I doubt that it was what he had dreamed of as a kid.

He didn't even get in the photo.

I don’t often see the start of baseball games, particularly evening ones, but for this one I got to witness the celebrity opening pitch  by a girl who seemed well-known to a fair proportion of the crowd and then the national anthem played on a saxophone. I haven’t been missing much if I’m honest about it. My section was still quite empty when the game started although the other areas of the ground had filled up nicely. It was a good ten minutes into the game before the bloke who’d sold me my ticket turned up with his mate. As he’d been outside for at least an hour beforehand it did strike me as quite poor timekeeping to still manage to miss the opening innings.

Samsung got off to a good start with two runs early on. The starting pitcher for the Wyverns, Kim Kwang Heong, struggled a bit and he got the hook early in fourth after conceding a third run. I’d like to think that he went to help his mate out warming up the relief pitchers rather than sulking at his big day coming to a premature end.

Kim Kwang Heong gets the game underway for the Wyverns

The opening fella for the Lions, Yoon Seong Hwan, fared marginally better surviving slightly longer into the fourth innings before making the long walk back to the dugout. His team was leading 4-1 at that stage so I dare say he was a little happier than his counterpart. After a couple of hours there were still people coming in. I know that it’s a game that can go on for four hours or so, but come on, it’s the play-off final and it’s a Sunday afternoon.

The blokes next to me were Wyvern supporters, so not only had they bought one ticket too many, they had bought them for the wrong part of the ground. I did wonder whether the pair of them had turned up the night before and found out their tickets were for the wrong day as well. They were a bit more organised with the food and drink though with one of them nipping to the concourse for some fried chicken and beer. They very generously passed me a can and offered me some of their chicken. I’d been taking it easy up until that point, staying off the beer, but as so often happens that first cold one of the afternoon opened the floodgates and when it was gone I went and got us another six. Why not, it was a warm autumn afternoon and a few beers to just take the edge off the day seemed appropriate.

They seemed to be enjoying themselves too.

The other lad then disappeared and returned with some fried mandu and a bag full of beer. The afternoon was getting better by the minute. When that beer had all gone I went back and got us some more as by this time the bloke to my left was joining in as well. After an hour or so we were high five-ing each other any time a Wyverns player got anywhere near the ball. Even the Samsung fan on my left seemed happy to cheer on the opposition efforts once the beer had kicked in.

Samsung added a fifth run in the seventh and it looked at that stage as if the game was over. Wyverns hit straight back though with a three run homer to reduce the deficit to a single run.

The Wyverns celebrate their comeback.

At one stage in their seventh innings SK Wyverns had nobody out and a bloke on each of first and third bases. If they were going to do something in the series than that was their time. They didn’t take the opportunity though and another two runs in the eighth for Samsung followed by one in the ninth made it 8-4.

SK couldn’t come back from that and Samsung took a three to one lead in the best of seven contest.

After watching the goalless draw between Jeju United and Jeonbuk Motors, Jen and I wandered out of the Jeju Ora Stadium and called into the baseball park next door. I’d have been happy just to have a quick nose around the pitch and empty stands but we got lucky again. There was another one of those sixty-four team tournaments going on for amateur sides, similar to the one that we had stumbled across in Chuncheon the week before.

There was a game just finishing as we went in, but with another scheduled for six o’clock we got some food and drinks from a stall outside and then went back to sit in the posh seats and wait for the action. The light was starting to fade, but with a beer in hand and the 1950m Hallasan providing the backdrop, a virtually empty small-town baseball stadium is still a decent place to be.

Jeju Baseball Stadium

The tournament had started on the previous day and the game that we would see would be a quarter-final tie between Zeeno and Incheon Munhaks. I’ve no idea at all about the Zeeno team, but assumed that Incheon Munhaks are either made up of locals who originate from Incheon or else they have entered the tournament in order to have a lad’s weekend away in Jeju. Then again, maybe someone just had a spare set of Munhak shirts.

Each match in the tournament would last for four innings, which for those of us with a limited attention span should work out nicely at around an hour and a half. The stadium was slightly smaller than the one we’d seen in Chuncheon last week, with a capacity of eight thousand. To be fair, that didn’t matter too much as there were only twenty-four people watching. As two of those were actually stood outside looking over the fence then they probably shouldn’t count in my official attendance figure. I think Jen and I were probably  the only people in there who weren’t either players or related to them.

Zeeno were in black and batted first, with the Incheon starting pitcher varying his initial deliveries between  55 kmph and 84 kmph. After watching professional baseball it did seem incredibly slow and I was surprised that more of the balls weren’t whacked straight back over his head.

Slow but steady

There was a lot of base-sneaking going on. In fact most of the batters seemed to have a reasonable chance of eventually getting around if they could just get to first base.

When it was time for the Munhaks to bat they had to contend with a Zeeno starting pitcher who was quite a bit faster than his opposite number, getting up to 119 kmph at one point. He wasn’t particularly accurate though and in the fading light I was expecting someone, possibly a spectator, maybe even me, to be hit between the eyes with a stray delivery.

Faster, but not quite so accurate.

The players did their best in the twilight for the first two innings, with the sun having almost set by the time the floodlights came on at half past six. It seemed like a different game then, a proper game, rather than something between a few mates who were about to be called in from the dark by their Mams to have their tea.

That's more like it.

For what it’s worth Zeeno had the game in the bag early on and by the time we reached the end of the fourth they had built up a healthy 13-3 advantage. There was only one home run in the whole game. Whilst the ball didn’t clear the outfield wall, it did just about reach it and that was far enough away to enable the batsman to get all the way around before the ball was retrieved and returned.

It all seems friendly enough at first base.

True to form, it was all over in an hour and a half. We could have stayed and watched the next one but we were getting hungry. All we had eaten since lunchtime was a hot dog on a stick that had been deep fried with some sort of bread wrapped around it and then chips stuck to it. It was more like one of those German hand grenades with a handle from the First World War than something intended to be eaten.

We sloped off to a restaurant around the corner and had a barbecue of Jeju black pig and Jeju horse. The Jeju horses are quite a lot smaller than normal ones, so I did wonder if we might get a whole one. We didn’t, but with the black pig as well, there was sufficient. However, the thought that we might be eating one of the horses that we had watched at Jeju race track on a previous visit did cross my mind.

A Jeju horse, possibly two servings.

Horse wasn’t the only slightly unusual item on the menu. They also had cat soup. If I hadn’t already eaten the hot dog hand grenade, a pig and a horse then I might just have found room for a bowl of cat soup. Next time.