Trail of the Lion King

After missing out on the baseball game in Chuncheon earlier in the day I decided that when we got back to Seoul I would pop along to Jamsil Stadium for the visit of Lotte Giants. Lotte always bring a lot of fans with them, probably because there are plenty of ex-Busan residents now living or working in Seoul, and so it is usually a decent occasion.

I was at the box office a good fifteen minutes before the start and all that were left in the main stand were a few single seats in the blue section close to the action. I thought, as usual, that I would take my chance in the outfield section instead.  As expected, it was packed and I wandered around for a good five minutes before a bloke begrudgingly moved his can of beer from the seat next to him so that I could sit down.

The starting pitcher for Doosan was Yang Hyeon. He has only just turned nineteen and has a really odd throwing action, releasing the ball from very low down, not far above the ground. He started well enough though with his first five pitches being either strikes or resulting in someone being caught out.

Yang Hyeong - Doosan Bears

Jang Won Jun started for Lotte and he did even better, conceding just three hits and one run in the six innings that he was on the field for.

Jang Won Jun - Lotte Giants

In the third innings Lotte outfielder Son Ah Seop hit a home run that scored two to put the visitors into the lead. Doosan pitcher Yang Hyeon didn’t last much longer after that, getting the tap on the shoulder at the end of the third. He had just been struck on the ankle with the ball though so that may have played some part in the decision. His replacement threw a lot more conventionally.

Son Ah Seop is congratulated by his Lotte Giants team mates.

There were still lots of people coming into the stadium at that time even though play had been underway for an hour. As so many of the seats were ‘reserved for a friend who hadn’t yet arrived’ very few of the latecomers seemed to be finding seats. Most chose to stand at the back whilst others sat in the aisles. One old biddie was made of sterner stuff than most and she insisted that people picked up their bags and moved along. She and her husband had been sat on tiny camping stools in the aisle until she had decided enough was enough.

It was mostly Lotte fans in the outfield seats.

It was good to see the stadium full for a change as it meant the return of the blokes who sell beer from the big packs on their backs. There was also someone selling bottles of soju from a carrier bag.

I decided to skip the soju and draft beer and nipped downstairs to pick up a few cans at the end of the fourth. On the way back I was almost hit by a Lotte home run. As I stood facing away from the pitch at the bottom of the steps on the way back to my seat, I saw the people around me either flinching or putting their hands up to catch the ball. I turned, but couldn’t pick up the flight and could do nothing more than put my free hand over my head and hope the ball didn’t knock my teeth out. It didnt. 3-0 Lotte.

The orange supermarket bags made an appearance in the fifth innings with most of the Lotte fans taking part and wearing them on their heads. One kid didn’t seem to get the hang of it and despite his Mam being sat next to him he just put his head inside it and tied it tighter than a Tory MP with an orange in his mouth would.

I bet he sticks his fingers into electrical sockets too.

Doosan had a chance to get back into the game in the fifth when Lotte deliberately walked Choi Joon Seok leaving batters on all three bases. The tactic paid off though with them all left stranded when they got the next bloke, Son Si Hyun, out without much difficulty

Lotte increased their lead in the seventh with a solo home run that once again landed not too far from me, before Doosan finally opened their account to make it 4-1. The game seemed over though and the visiting fans were enjoying themselves with Mexican Waves.

One of these days I'll bring a Tesco bag and join in.

Both sides scored a couple of runs apiece in the eighth to take it to 6-3 and that was how it eventually finished. The result didn’t matter much to Doosan Bears, but it was a valuable win for Lotte Giants as they try to secure second place in the standings.

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.

Wednesday night and it was time for another dose of end of season fifth plays sixth baseball. I know that sounds like I’m less than enthusiastic about it all, but I’m not. The main attraction for me is just sitting outside on a warmish evening and watching a bit of sport, so I don’t need a game where the result matters or where there is a lively atmosphere to enhance the occasion. I’d be just as happy if the stadium was virtually empty, I think.

This game promised to have a decent crowd however and as it was between local rivals Doosan Bears and LG Twins, it was likely to have a competitive edge to it that their lowly respective positions in the standings wouldn’t normally bring about. For what it’s worth, Doosan had won their last four games and were closing in on LG for the fifth spot. That didn’t mean a lot though as neither team had any realistic prospect of finishing fourth and earning a play-off place.

Jen and I walked there, getting to the Jamsil stadium at twenty past seven, fifty minutes after the start. We were offered blue section seats near the action by a granny tout for less than their face value of 12,000 won but I fancied having a bit of distance between us and the fans banging their inflatable sticks so we just got a couple of 7,000 won outfield tickets from the box office instead.

Despite it being a derby, the stadium was half empty as we took our seats towards the end of the third innings. The score was level at a run each. It was a lot cooler than it had been at the previous week’s visit, hopefully a sign that Autumn had finally arrived. As you might expect Spring and Autumn are the best times to be in Korea.

Koreans often rattle on about Korea having four seasons as if it’s more than every other country has. What next? They have day and night? What they usually fail to mention though is the relative shortness of Spring and Autumn. This year I reckon that Spring lasted for a total of three days. At least that was the length of time between me having to have the heating on in my apartment and me needing to start-up the air-conditioning. Three days. I might have missed Spring altogether if I’d gone for a decent shit.

Lee Sang Yeol  was the starting pitcher for LG and he conceded again in the fourth when Kim Dong Joo hit a home run to make it two-one to the notional visitors. I’d normally post a photo of both starting pitchers, but unfortunately I’ve mistakenly deleted all my pictures from this game so you’ll just have to imagine what Mr. Lee looks like. Doosan were wearing their black away strip as they were the away team, but here’s one I’d taken at a previous game of home run scorer Kim Dong Joo.

Kim Dong Joo - Pretend he has his black away shirt on.

The lad who had started last weeks game against Nexen, Kim Seung Hoi, was pitching for the Bears. LG equalised in their fourth innings but I missed it as I was concentrating on my brie and crackers.

Kim Seung Hoi - Doosan Bears

At half time there was some game that seemed to involve trying to make your opponent move his or her feet whilst doing your best not to move your own. It was a bit confusing but apparently someone did enough to win a trip to the Philippines.

The 'Don't Move Your Feet' game

In the seventh innings Kim Hyun Soo managed to crack one to third allowing Jung Soo Bin to get around for the run and put Doosan back in front. Someone else got home in the seventh as well, extending the lead to 4-2.

Kim Hyun Soo - Doosan Bears

There had been quite a lot of small kids in the crowd, but most of them started to drift off at this point. I suppose 9pm is late enough on a school night. One of them had a gadget consisting of a plastic finger on a telescopic stick. It looked ideal for gesturing at fans and players or for poking his contemporaries in the eye. I was impressed. I could do with one of those at work.

It’s getting harder to invent things these days as most of the good stuff has already been thought of. In the past I’d came up with ideas such as a spoon with a hole in it for people who don’t like too much milk on their cornflakes and the ‘Ryanair coat’ which looked a bit like one of those puffa jackets but instead of it coming pre-filled with insulation you stuffed your socks and underpants into the lining instead to reduce your luggage weight. Sadly I was a bit slow off the mark in both cases and someone else is now hawking them around the appropriate trade fairs.

The good news about drinking at the baseball though is it allows my mind to wander as to what the world really needs and sometime in the seventh innings I had a bit of a brainwave. Baby wigs. As good as a hat for keeping the kid’s head warm but also serving the purpose of stopping baldy babies from being bullied at Mother and Toddler group.

Sadly, I was too slow again.

You can barely tell it's not natural.

I did think afterwards about adapting the idea for dogs, but someone had been there before me too.

I'm not sure about the tie though.

In the ninth, someone else got around for Doosan to make it 5-2. I didn’t notice who it was as I was too busy planning my baby wig empire whilst eating fake Ferraro Rocher chocolates. That’s the way it finished with Doosan creeping slowly towards to LG’s fifth place in the standings and me wondering just how long I’d have before I’d need to put the heating on.

If it looks like I’m slacking a bit with these posts, that’s probably because I have been. I’ve just got back from a fortnight in the UK where amongst other things, Jen and I walked forty odd miles along Hadrian’s Wall and embarked on a culture frenzy that included Macbeth at Stratford, British Sea Power at the Galtres Festival and, in what was a bit of an unexpected bonus, Paul Daniels pulling a rabbit from a hat in a lecture hall at Edinburgh.

If I tell you that what seemed like the only low points in the entire fortnight were The Wedding Present choosing not to play Kennedy in what was an otherwise excellent Town Hall gig and the majority of the nesting birds on the Farne Islands sodding off to The Congo or somewhere the day before our boat trip to see them, then you’ll get the idea of how good it all was. The Boro had even read the script and came from behind to beat Birmingham and maintain our unbeaten record.

This pair seem to have it too good at home to want to fly South

Still, I’m sure too much excitement can’t be good for you and so once we got back to Korea I thought that I’d restore the balance a little by taking a walk along to the Jamsil Stadium to see Doosan Bears battle it out with Nexen Heroes in a sixth plays eighth encounter in the Korean Baseball League. It’s the arse end of the regular season now and with five weeks to go, the play-off positions are just about settled. The closest that any of the players in this game will get to them will be if they happen to stumble across a game on the telly whilst on their holidays. Still, even when the result matters as little to the players as it usually does to me, it’s a pleasant way to spend an evening with a few cans and a bit of a picnic.

I got there forty minutes after the start and bought a ticket for the outfield. It was definitely the smallest crowd that I’d seen at a baseball fixture, if you exclude the games on a Sunday morning played between mates down by the river. The stadium was no more than a quarter full, with the turnout from the visitors being particularly poor. I’d estimate that only around a hundred fans had made made the short trip from nearby Mokdong. Perhaps Heroes fans all fly south at this time of year too.

Nexen fans - rarer than Farne Islands cormorants.

The third innings was just drawing to a close when I took my seat and it was still scoreless. I’ve no idea who the starting pitcher for Doosan was, but he did pretty well. By the time he got the nod to sit down early in the seventh he hadn’t conceded a run and had only given up four hits.

Kim Soo Kyung was pitching for Nexen and he had a good game too. The former Rookie of the Year and veteran of four Korean Series wins back when Nexen were Hyundai Unicorns didn’t even get hit until the fourth innings, although that might be more a reflection on the Doosan batting. It was the sixth innings before he conceded the opening run of the match.

Kim Soo Kyung - Nexen Heroes

 Doosan’s Jung Soo Bin cracked one far enough to get to second and then made it to third when the next bloke in did that tippy tappy sacrificial thing. The next two fellas both got walked meaning the Bears had batters on bases one, two and three. It was all set for Kim Dong Joo to be the hero but he got caught in the deep. Choi Joon Seok had the next opportunity and Kim Soo Kyung sent him down an atrocious delivery that bounced before it got to him, deceiving the catcher behind the plate who fumbled it and allowed Jung Soo Bin to scramble home in a play that didn’t reflect at all well on the fielding side.

Jung Soo Bin gets ready to make a dash for it.

Nexen bounced back in the seventh though as one of the Doosan relief pitchers had to watch what was only his second ball being hit high into the seats near to me for two home runs. The away fans celebrated as best they could, although in the absence of any cheerleaders they struggled a bit. Mind you, Doosan weren’t much better off, their usual complement of four girls had been reduced to just the two.

Still two more than Nexen had.

The visitors held their lead until the ninth innings when Doosan somehow managed to equalise and send the game into overtime at 2-2. I must admit, it took me a bit by surprise as I don’t imagine that anyone, apart from Choi Joon Seok who scored the home run, will have been too happy about staying late in a meaningless game.

Choi Joon Seok - Doosan Bears

Still, I’m sure the additional exercise will do the Bears some good as a few of their players looked somewhat out of condition to me. Have you ever seen the Tom and Jerry cartoon where one of them, probably Tom, gets into a bit of trouble whilst ten pin bowling and gets moulded into the shape of a skittle? Well, without naming individuals, there are a couple of Bears players that look like that.

I didn’t have to hang about for long though as Nexen notched another couple of runs in the tenth to seal a 4-2 away win and send their handful of fans away happy. A rare feat when you are bottom of the league.

Friday night and it was time for a bit more baseball with Hanwha Eagles visiting Jamsil for the first of their three games with LG Twins. As usual Hanwha are having a pretty poor season with them currently sitting seventh of the eight teams in the rankings. LG are doing a little better in fifth, two wins behind local rivals Doosan Bears in the fight for the fourth play-off place.

As far as recent form goes, both teams were on the wrong end of a 9-1 stuffing the previous evening, LG away to SK Wyverns and Hanwha at home to Lotte Giants. That’s not really the standard of performance that will have the fans flocking to the ground and so Jen and I thought that we’d just take our time and walk there.

We got in at about twenty past seven with three innings gone and LG Twins already ahead by four runs to nil. The stadium was a lot busier than I’d imagined, with far more Hanwha fans than I’d have thought their position and current form would have warranted. Perhaps LG’s 9-1 defeat the previous evening had given them a bit of hope that they might pick up a win. It still took me ten minutes to get the beer in though due to a combination of queueing at the wrong level and then being stuck behind people paying for a packet of dried octopus with a debit card.

Ahn Seung Min was the starting pitcher for Hanwha and by the time he disappeared at the end of the fifth LG had increased their lead to 5-0.

Ahn Seung Min - Hanwha Eagles

The American Ben Jukich started for LG and was pretty impressive rattling through eight innings with barely a hit and no runs against him. The game was as good as over when with just the one innings remaining his boss gave him a ‘job and knock’ and he was allowed to nip off home early.

Ben Jukich - LG Twins

Other foreign interest came in the form of Karim Garcia, who seems to be the Robbie Savage of baseball. He picked up a seven game ban whilst playing with Lotte Giants last season for giving an umpire a bit more slaver than is apparently acceptable and despite scoring sixty six runs in Major League Baseball his main claim to fame in America seems to be a fight that he had with eight time All-Star Pedro Martinez.

"Karim Garcia, who's Karim Garcia?"

Garcia behaved himself on this occasion though and in the eighth he looked as if he had managed to belt one into next door’s garden. Unfortunately for the stroppy Mexican it was caught a foot or so from the top of the boundary wall, just in front of a couple of hundred office workers all sat together on some team-building bonding exercise.

"Stand up if you'd rather be at home with the family"

Hanwha’s fans kept up their support all evening despite their team dropping too many catches and missing more run outs than they would have been happy with. The game ended at about half past nine with LG eventually knocking up eight runs without reply, giving Hanwha their second eight run loss in twenty four hours and allowing LG to move a little closer to a play-off spot.

I don’t feel as if I’ve seen anything like as much baseball this season compared to last year, mainly because of the weather. We had intended to go along to Jamsil three days earlier but the worst rain in Seoul for years started falling an hour or two before the start and that was that.

We’d even got tickets in advance for a change as Jen had worked out how to buy them from the cash machine at the local GS25 convenience store. It seems a little insensitive though to complain about not being able to watch a baseball game when dozens of people died in the floods. So I won’t.

Luckily, we live at the top of a hill.

By Friday afternoon the rain had stopped and so we caught the subway at Yeoksam for the three stop journey to Sports Complex. It was rush-hour so the carriages were packed and we had to fight our way on and off. At the stadium we skipped the queue and picked up three tickets from a tout for the main stand at ten thousand won a go. That’s a thousand won over face value, but it saved us a few minutes waiting at the ticket office.

We’d missed the first half an hour or so and with two innings completed  the game was still scoreless. Radhames Liz, the Dominican who had started over twenty times for the Baltimore Orioles earlier in his career, was pitching for LG. He looked very good early on but faded a bit towards the end. He conceded two runs in the fifth and another in each of the sixth and seventh innings before getting the hook before the start of the eighth.

Radhames Liz - LG Twins

Cha Woo Chan was the starting pitcher for Samsung Lions, who have been making one or two changes lately, notably with their foreign players. First baseman Ryan Garko was sent back to America after scoring just a single home run all season and their Japanese pitcher Ken Kadokura has apparently been dropped to their minor league team. I’d actually no idea that there was a minor league in Korea, I’ve not seen anything between the top level KBO games and the blokes who play with their mates down by the river. Perhaps I’ll bump into Kenny Kadokura next time I go for a stroll alongside the Han.

Cha Woo Chan had a fairly ropey start with the ball and it looked at one point like he might get withdrawn as early as the third innings as he gave up a few hits.

Cha Woo Chan - Samsung Lions

It got even worse for him in the fourth when Park Yong Taik and Cho In Sung  smacked home runs off successive balls.

Cho In Sung - LG Twins

Cha picked up a bit after that though and didn’t concede another run for the rest of the evening, finally stepping aside in the eighth with his team 4-2 ahead. Both sets of relief pitchers did their jobs and there were no more runs.

My son Tom, who was watching his first ever game of baseball, was impressed with the whole experience. The crowd was far more enthusiastic than at any of the football games he had been to over here and he liked the way that the gaps in play were filled by cheerleaders or competitions where girls competed for a prize of a few cases of beer by seeing which of them could down a pitcher of the stuff the quickest.

It's almost as good as half time penalties.

We had a few beers ourselves afterwards in a bar called Beer Mart. The quirk being that you just select your own bottles of beer from the glass fronted fridges and then when it’s time to go, collect up the empties from your table in a shopping basket and take them to the till to pay. I know that sounds like we spent that part of the evening drinking in the beer section of Tesco, but it was a bar, honest.

It’s been more than five weeks since I’ve been to a baseball game due to a combination of holiday, rain and sell-out crowds. I don’t mind missing games if it’s because I’m back in the UK but when games are rained off more often than they take place then it gets a bit frustrating.

On one of the occasions when the weather didn’t intervene Jen and I wandered down to the Jamsil stadium only to find the game sold out. Yes, really sold out. There weren’t even any touts with tickets. It’s rare that I’ve ever not got into a game that I’d wanted to, even cup finals. In fact, the only time I can remember walking away from a stadium whilst the match went on without me is a French football game from about ten years ago.

My son Tom and I had been camping near Bayonne and had driven up to Bordeaux to see their game with Paris Saint Germain. We’d done the same a year earlier and watched Dugarry run the show for the home team. Little did I know then that the Frenchman would score against the Boro for Birmingham a couple of years afterwards or that former Middlesbrough player Andy Todd would have one of the most memorable days of his Blackburn career by getting sent off for booting Dugarry up the arse. Welcome to England Christophe.

He's taller these days.

This time though the star attraction was to be one of the visiting players, a young Brazilian called Ronaldinho. The area around the stadium was a lot busier than it had been the previous year and, as with the recent baseball game, there wasn’t a tout to be seen. We hung around for twenty minutes until the streets were deserted and then drove back to Bayonne. As the game ended goalless and Ronaldhino missed the game through injury, it wasn’t too much of a disappointment in hindsight.

The weather was fine last Tuesday though and after a weekend of rain I just wanted to get out of the apartment and see a bit of sport. I didn’t want to chance another sell-out so I got the subway and was outside the Jamsil stadium no more than ten minutes after the start of the game. I spotted a tout and as I wasn’t in the mood for arseing about I took a seat in the main stand off him for twenty thousand won. That’s around twice face value and about twelve quid. It’s only once every five weeks though.

Doosan Bears, who were entertaining Lotte Giants, haven’t been having the best of seasons. They have recently moved up into fifth position, just behind local rivals LG Twins in the last of the play-off spots. Lotte Giants have been having a worse time though and look likely to be off on their holidays the day after the regular season finishes.

I took my seat up in the main stand with the opening Doosan innings eight balls old and with two players out. To make matters worse for them Lotte already had two runs on the board. Song Seung Joon was pitching for the Giants and it didn’t take him long to bring the Bears first innings to a close.

Song Seung Joon - Lotte Giants

Things got a bit better for the Bears when it was their turn to bat again. Choi Joon Seok just missed out on a home run when he managed to hit the wall below the scoreboard. It was enough to get him to second base though and it allowed Kim Dong Joo to get home and pull a run back.

Kim Dong Joo - Doosan Bears

Kim Dong Joo is pretty popular with the home fans. It’s his fourteenth season with the Bears though so it’s not too surprising. He’s been a part of the South Korean baseball team for a while too, with gold medals from a few Asian Games and one from the Beijing Olympics.

A  couple of minutes later Choi Joon Seok got his reward for the big hit  by scurrying home to level the score. He’s a popular fella too with the home fans, possibly I imagine because of his unathletic frame as much as his big hitting.

Choi Joon Seok - Doosan Bears

The scores remained level until the fifth when the starting pitcher for the Bears Lee Yong Chan gave up his third run. Another followed in the sixth innings and that was the end of him. He’s a pitcher who is normally used to close a game so I suspect that he was probably worn out by then.

Lee Yong Chan - Doosan Bears

By this stage of the game the Lotte fans had got their orange supermarket bags out and were brightening up the stadium by wearing them on their heads.

Old school 'airbag' style.

There’s a new fashion this year though, as a lot of women, mainly women anyway, have taken to twisting the bag to form a pair of what I presume would described in the style magazines and on the Paris catwalks as ‘Plastic bag bat ears’.

It's how the cool kids are wearing them this season.

And for those of you interested in the singing rather than the fashion, I can report that the Lotte fans still direct that old favourite ‘Shut Up Boy’ at the rival fans, whilst I’m pretty sure that a couple of the other chants were ‘We Hate Ramyun, and ‘Walnuts and Peanuts’. The vocal support paid off for Lotte as their team added another couple of runs in the eight to win the game 6-2.

I’d originally been thinking about going to the football as FC Seoul were playing Japanese club Kashima Antlers in the Champions League. I’d been at their last game against Japanese opposition and the away end had been pretty lively with plenty of singing and a couple of dozen flares. My plan for this one had been to go in with the visitors and hope that the atmosphere would be similar. However, when I came out of work I just couldn’t be arsed dashing about and riding the subway during rush hour.

LG Twins were playing Doosan Bears though and that was a lot easier to get to. I could even watch the beginning of the game on the telly whilst I had my tea. Radhames Liz was the starting pitcher for LG and he rattled through the first load of Doosan batsmen in about five minutes. He looks the part and so he should, having started quite a few times in Major League Baseball in the US

Radhames Liz - LG Twins

The opening pitcher for the Bears, Kim Sun Woo started off ok too and by the time I left my apartment at about ten to seven the game was already well into the second innings.

Kim Sun Woo - Doosan Bears

It usually takes about three quarters of an hour to walk to the Jamsil stadium, depending on how long you get held up for when crossing the roads. There must have been a fair bit of traffic this time as it was quarter to eight before I arrived there. It was still quite busy outside even though the game was already seventy five minutes old.

Jamsil Stadium

Police were ticketing cars that were parked on the pavement, fried chicken sellers were trying to get rid of stock that must have been a couple of hours old at best and the touts were still looking to offload whatever seats they had left.

I was offered an 8,000 won seat in the main stand for 10,000 won. I knocked it back though as I didn’t want to have to walk around to the other side of the stadium and then look for that seat. I paid 7,000 won at the ticket office for a seat in the outfield and went straight in at the gate nearby.

It was packed inside, as you would expect when the two teams who share the stadium play each other and it was a struggle to find a seat. I wasn’t that bothered though and just found a spot where I could lean against the barrier at the top of the stand.

There's usually space for a picnic though.

In the time that it had taken me to walk from Yeoksam, the game had moved into the third innings and LG were leading 3-2. That wasn’t much of a surprise, they have been having a much better season than the Bears who haven’t been able to find anything like the form they had last season.

Jamsil Stadium outfield.

Doosan levelled it in the fourth before conceding another two runs to fall behind again by the end of that innings. Both pitchers were starting to look tired, having thrown about a hundred balls apiece. The Bears lad got the hook first, followed shortly afterwards by Radhames Liz.

It always looked like LG would go on to seal the victory though, they managed sixteen hits to Doosan’s five and in the sixth innings they added another couple of runs to move out of reach at 7-3. Strange, that sort of score doesn’t seem anything unusual. When it happened at the Asan Citizen against Seoul Martyrs game at the weekend it was quite another story.

LG Twins fans enjoying themselves.

I moved to an empty seat for the last half hour, as a lot of the Doosan Bears fans had seen enough. The game finished at ten and by quarter to eleven I was back in my apartment. Seoul had won the Champions League game that I’d decided not to bother with, but as there had been a pretty low attendance I think I probably made the right choice to give it a miss in favour of the baseball.