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Doosan Bears v Kia Tigers, Sunday 5th September, 5.30pm

September 16, 2010

I find it very difficult not to watch live sport if the opportunity is there. Apart from it being an enjoyable way to spend some time, I’m always convinced that if I don‘t go I’ll miss something worthwhile. You know,  like the Boro scoring eight. I was halfway up Great Gable when we did that. Actually, just us scoring these days would probably do me. 

May 2008, as we were beating Man City 8-1. Hard to believe really.

 This baseball game was something that I’d had no intention of going to see up until a few seconds before I leapt off the subway. I’d been returning from a trip to Jeonju where I’d watched Jeonbuk beat Pohang Steelers the day before and the subway route from the bus station back to my apartment goes past the Jamsil baseball stadium. 

Whilst I suspected that there might be a game on I didn’t know for certain as it’s the stage in the season where previously cancelled games are squeezed in here and there and so it was quite possible that the Doosan Bears and the LG Twins could both had been given an away fixture that afternoon. 

I was also quite tired. I’d got through a fair few beers before, during and after the match, followed by a morning spent sightseeing in Jeonju and then four hours stuck in traffic on the bus. If anything, I was looking forward to a bit of a lie down. 

We’d been wandering around the old Hanok village area in Jeonju that morning, marvelling at the recently erected ’historical’ features, a lot of which were revealed to be replicas when you read the small print on the signs nearby. We’d seen a Taesil, which was a stone structure which had once contained the umbilical cord of King Yejong. It didn‘t any more though because, as the accompanying sign pointed out, the pot containing His Majesty’s surgical waste had been stolen in 1928 by the occupying Japanese army, possibly to keep their loose change in. 

Not the King's umbilical cord.

 Then we saw a replica of the building that had once housed the Sillok, a multi-volume book set that recorded daily life in the royal court in the fifteenth century. This too, we were informed, had been destroyed by the Japanese, this time in 1592, no doubt because they were out of toilet paper and couldn’t be bothered to nip down to the 7-Eleven. 

Not a load of rare old books.

 Around the corner were a load of copies of paintings of the various Korean monarchs. No prizes for guessing who had used the originals for sledging down hills on snowy days. 

Apparently it's his head that's the funny shape, not the hat.

 One thing that had survived intact in the Hanok Village was a tree that was reputed to be six hundred years old. I can only presume that the Japanese didn’t realise its significance at any point or else they would no doubt have whittled it down to a pair of chopsticks. 

So, after all of that I had plans for a quiet evening. The schedule changed though as the train drew into the Sports Complex subway station and I saw the KIA Tigers fans get up from their seats and head towards the door. Initially I didn‘t give it much of a thought, then I wondered if I should go as well. I began to think that I was missing out on something and by the time the train had come to a standstill I was stood at the door too. 

Even as I walked towards the stadium, I was still weighing it up. On one hand, I was worn out and had been on my way home. Not only that, but it was an end of season game where the result wasn’t likely to affect anyones play-off position. In its favour, it was live sport, it was a sunny evening and I could get a box of those weird shaped chicken wings from the Burger King stand for my tea. The chicken wings swung it and I picked up a ticket from a tout for a couple of thousand won below face value and headed in. 

Did I mention that we'd had a typhoon?

 Sometimes I do stuff because I can, rather than because I really want to do it. It’s a bit like when you eat a whole packet of chocolate chip cookies just because you have them in the house and even though you aren’t remotely hungry. Still, enough of the inner turmoil and more about the match. 

It was Doosan Bears against KIA Tigers. They are both reasonable teams. Doosan are looking as if they will finish third in the table, whilst KIA will probably finish fifth, just outside of the play-off positions. There was a decent crowd too, certainly a lot more people than there were at the LG Twins v Nexen game I’d been to at this stadium the previous week. 

 

Doosan looked to be starting the game a bit more positively, with one of the Tigers getting out after three strikes in successive balls. It happened again shortly afterwards although I wasn’t too surprised as the lad who was swinging at fresh air had a batting average of about 0.1. 

It turned around in the fourth innings as KIA Tigers hit a couple of homers in quick succession, each was to the furthest part of the ground, just in front of the scoreboard and each one was worth two runs. It meant that by the end of the fourth, KIA had a 4-1 lead. 

Cheerleaders for the Doosan Bears.

 That was where I left it. I’d eaten the odd-shaped chicken wings for my tea and I’d seen about an hour and a quarter which on this occasion was enough. Besides, I probably had a couple of packets of chocolate chip cookies in the cupboard that had been there longer than could reasonably have been expected. 

And you know that whole thing about having to go to the match in case I missed something exciting? Well, I checked the score the next day and with two already out in the final Doosan innings, the Tigers were hanging on at 4-3. The Bears brought their pinch hitter on and he whacked a two-run homer for a last gasp 5-4 victory. 

Bugger.

Posted in Baseball, Dead people and stuff | 3 Comments »

LG Twins v Nexen Heroes, Tuesday 31st August 2010, 6.30pm

September 7, 2010

 

After turning up for a non-existent baseball game the previous Sunday, I carefully checked the fixtures for tonight’s match with a couple of different sources. Although, with Doosan Bears and LG Twins sharing the same stadium you would be very unlucky to get to Jamsil and find that there wasn’t a game taking place. 

Mind you, when I arrived at about seven o’clock at the Sports Complex subway station I was beginning to wonder if it was a case of deja-vu. The game had supposedly started half an hour earlier but I was  a little concerned to find the station deserted. I’ve often turned up whilst the game is in progress and there is usually a steady stream of latecomers. When a match lasts for about four hours, it’s not so important to be there for the start. Fortunately when I got to the top of the subway exit steps I could see the old biddies with the stalls selling beer, gimbap, seaweed and various forms of octopus and squid.  Jen was a bit late and so I got myself a can of beer and went to sort the tickets. I sometimes think the entire Korean economy is kept afloat by four-foot tall grannies with tight curly perms and one of them offered me a couple of outfield tickets for four thousand won apiece. An evening at a sporting event doesn’t come much cheaper than that, but with rain in the air I had to turn her down and I got two for the main stand from the ticket office at twice the price, still good value though at the equivalent of four quid a pop. 

We got inside at 7.25pm and the game wasn’t yet halfway through the second innings. We’d missed a few runs as the score was three each, but there were still another seven and a half innings to go. Plenty of time to relax with a few drinks as the moths fluttered about in the dusk. 

Whilst it might not have been deja-vu in terms of arriving at an empty stadium, it certainly was deja-vu in terms of the teams playing. I’d been here nine days previously to watch LG take on Nexen and it was the those two teams again this evening. That’s one of the drawbacks of an eight team league. I think the regular season fixtures were scheduled to have been finished by now and these games are the ones that had been due to take place earlier in the season but had been cancelled for one reason or another. 

Home fans.

It was quite handy in one way, as I could remember some of the players. The young lad who was the starting pitcher for LG Twins last time was still in the team, although Nexen had a different bloke opening for them. It’s quite strange now that I’ve got a bit of knowledge about whats going on, I’m watching the games differently to the way I did at the start of the season when I just drank my beer and waited for the ball to be hit into the crowd. It helps that Jen knows what she’s talking about, well, with baseball anyway, and she was able to talk me through the batting average statistic this time. It’s a bit like a batting average in cricket really, the higher the better and most seemed to be around the 0.2 to 0.3 area. 

As a beginner I do sometimes wonder if I’m focusing on completely the wrong aspects of the game though. I can remember when I started taking my son Tom to the Boro games as a small kid. He would always ask me on the way to the match who I thought would take the kick off to start the game. Not which team, but which player. Whilst I would try to point out to him that this was of little consequence, he never seemed too impressed that I either had no idea or invariably got it wrong. It tended to make him doubt the validity of anything else that I told him for the rest of the day. 

There was a very low crowd for the game, possibly explaining why the subway was so quiet. LG Twins had a couple of thousand fans but Nexen must have had little more than the players Mams and Dads as there couldn’t have been more than fifty of them in total, despite them being a Seoul based team. Nexen are currently second bottom of the league with no chance of making the play-offs, whilst I think sixth placed LG might still have a slim chance of finishing in the fifth place that prolongs their season. 

Away fans

As the empty beer cans accumulated  I concentrated less on the stats and more on the oddities. The players only have two minutes between innings so I was curious to see how rushed the catcher would be, particularly on those occasions where he was on one of the bases when his team’s batting innings ended. The answer isn’t very rushed at all. They tend to stroll back to the dugout as if they have all day and then slowly put on the protective shin, chest and head guards whilst the reserve catcher gets to go onto the grass and help the pitcher with his warm up. 

We nearly got hit by a ball at one point despite being in the upper tier. It bounced a couple of rows in front of us and made the small kid who got it very happy. Almost as happy as the grown man who had vaulted a fence a few moments earlier after the previous mis-hit into the crowd and beat the kids to the ball, which he then very carefully put into his briefcase. 

 

There wasn’t a lot more scoring with LG drawing level in the fifth innings in bizarre circumstances as the Nexen pitcher managed to send one down that went over the head of the catcher, allowing a player to get home from third as the ball was retrieved. It was still five apiece when in the seventh innings LG took the young kid off and brought in their relief pitcher. He didnt last long though as he was replaced at the start of the ninth, by which time the Twins had taken a 6-5 lead. The third pitcher lasted even less time than the second as with just the one batter out in the ninth he was replaced by the fourth Twins pitcher of the innings. The new lad managed to get the last two Heroes players out meaning that the Twins didn’t need to take their final innings. 

I’m looking forward to the playoffs where hopefully we’ll be back to full houses, players who don’t have their minds on their holidays and coaches who aren’t tempted to give every pitcher on the books a bit of game time.

Posted in Baseball | 2 Comments »

SK Wyverns v KIA Tigers, Sunday 29th August 2010, 5pm

September 6, 2010

I didn’t really have high expectations for this game. The weather had been absolutely atrocious all morning and there were small rivers running down the street outside of my apartment. Incheon, where Sk Wyverns play, is quite a distance from central Seoul though and the weather forecast for there was slightly better.

I’d arranged to meet Jen there, plan A being that we would have a picnic on the grass whilst sitting in the sun watching a bit of baseball. Plan B, if needed, was that we would sit high in the stand drinking beer whilst watching the players dodge on and off the pitch between showers. Either option struck me as being a pleasant way to spend a Sunday afternoon.

It takes about an hour and a half to get to Munhak and when we arrived it was raining quite heavily. There were a lot of people milling about the entrance to the subway, mainly teenage girls and it turned out that they were attending a concert at the football stadium. I could hear the bands that were low down on the bill and it sounded like the stuff on Galaxy that my daughter tortures me with in the car when I’m home.

I had a wander up to the stadium and it was apparent that the game was off. There was nobody at all visible in the stands and the ticket office was closed. It had obviously been called off quite some time ago. There were plenty of food stalls around the subway entrance so it was on to Plan C. We had a corn dog each and I drank the emergency beers that I was carrying in case of situations like this. Corn dogs, for those who don’t know, are a hot dog that is pushed longways onto a stick and then encased completely in a bread roll. It then has a further layer of breadcrumbs or something on top of that so it resembles one of those hand grenades on a stick that the Germans used to use. The whole thing is deep fried. I know it sounds as if it’s Scottish but I think it’s actually an American snack

After we’d cleared off home I discovered that the website I’d used for the fixtures was wrong and whilst we’d been sat in the rain at Munhak, SK Wyverns had actually been playing a couple of hundred miles or so away in Busan against the Lotte Giants.  Next week I plan to go to the Olympic Stadium on the off-chance that Man Utd might be playing Liverpool when I get there. I’ll take some sandwiches too I think.

Posted in Baseball | 1 Comment »

LG Twins v Nexen Heroes, Sunday 22nd August 2010, 5pm

August 30, 2010

 

After the previous days failure to see the game at Chungju and to even get to the foot of Woraksan I was quite determined to see some sport and do a bit of hiking. The sport was easy, LG Twins had a home fixture against Nexen Heroes at Jamsil that evening and picking that baseball game would give me plenty of time to get up into the hills first. I didn’t want to risk even the slightest chance of getting lost and so I played it safe and took the subway to Dokwabi where I could hike the same route on Bukhansan that I’d done almost six months earlier soon after arriving in Seoul. 

 My main recollection of that first hike was that it had been incredibly slippy underfoot. There had been a layer of snow and ice on a lot of the ground then and if I hadn’t been generously lent a crampon by one of the other walkers in the group I doubt I would have got around. This time though, any difficulty was likely to come from the extreme heat. The newspapers were warning against any outdoor activity whatsoever and I hoped that would cut down the numbers of other hikers on the route. 

 I left my apartment just before nine and by ten o’clock I was at Dokwabi. The subway journey, despite being twenty one stops, was easy enough as I got a seat early on. Once again I was entertained by someone taking advantage of the captive audience and giving a sales pitch. The product this time looked to be a couple of small elastic bands which the purchaser could slip over the ends of the arms of a pair of glasses and which would prevent their glasses from falling off no matter what the situation. The salesman demonstrated their effectiveness by fitting them on to his own glasses and then violently shaking his head. It worked well and he sold a few packets of them to the short sighted for a thousand won each. I like watching these demonstrations, mainly to try and work out what the product is supposed to be. This one was quite straightforward though and it helped the journey pass a little quicker. 

 Once at Dokwabi, I noticed that the number of hikers leaving the subway didn‘t seem to be any less than the last time I’d been here. Obviously I wasn’t the only one to assume that the heatwave warnings were meant for other people only. 

The remoteness of the mountains

 I hadn’t bothered packing anything to eat, working on the basis that there are always plenty of food stalls at the foot of any hiking trail over here and I would be able to pick up some gimbap or dumplings, maybe even a bowl of roast potatoes. Not this time though and I was reduced to calling into a small and not very well stocked convenience store where the best I could manage was a peanut butter sandwich and a packet of custard creams. Hopefully I wouldn’t need rescuing at any point as I’d be a bit embarrassed trying to explain away my poor preparation. 

 It took me three quarters of an hour to reach the first peak, Jokduribong. It is only 370 metres high but it was quite steep and the heat made it hard going. 

That's Seoul behind me.

I sat at the top for about half an hour, appreciating the cooling breeze and the views across Seoul. It was a little misty though and whilst I could see the World Cup Stadium I couldn’t pick up my office block south of the river. 

It's all out there somewhere.

There were a few pigeons wandering around and I thought I’d share my peanut butter sandwich with them. They seemed to have a much higher opinion of it than I did and before long there were about twenty of them at my feet, fighting over the crumbs as I tried to feed them all. It reminded me of a trip to Wembley with my junior school to see a schoolboy international thirty five years earlier. We’d arrived by train in London in the morning, popped into Downing Street to have a gawp at the front door of Number 10 (in those days it wasn’t closed off to the public) and then we’d gone along to Trafalgar Square to feed the pigeons before going to the match. I can remember having at least one pigeon on each arm eating out of my hands and another on my head, no doubt feasting on my nits. 

I kept the custard creams hidden away.

 Anyway, none of these pigeons sat on my head, they just ate the bits of sandwich as quickly as I could throw them to the ground. 

I retraced my steps for a while and dropped down in to the valley before making my way up Hyangnobong. At 535 metres this was a bit higher than Jokduribong and just as steep. There were a few sections that were scrambles rather than trails, some of them with railing or ropes to make it a bit easier. The route upwards provided good views of Jokduribong and in particular of the climbers who were making their way down. I couldn’t work out whether they had brought their own ropes to abseil with or whether they were making use of permanent fixtures. It made for an interesting break though as I watched them from across the valley. 

Jokduribong from the other side, you can see the abseilers if you look closely.

I got to the top of Hyangnobong at about noon. Or rather I got as close as I was allowed to get, with the actual peak being barriered off. At this point I had to decide whether or not to carry on to the next peak, Bibong, or to descend towards Tangchundae. Last time I’d been here we’d continued to Bibong but it had been a lot cooler then and I’d had more in my backpack than a packet of custard creams. I decided to head downwards. 

It took me about an hour and a half to reach the bottom, passing some raised platforms on the way that were occupied by groups of blokes drinking soju and makkgeolli. I also saw a few butterflies too, none of which were familiar to me. Once at the bottom I just hopped onto the nearest bus and waited until it stopped outside one of the subway stations before getting off. The system here makes doing things like that easy. I have a transport card, pre-loaded with money, that I just have to touch against a pad as I get on and off a bus. It means I don’t have to tell the driver where I want to go to, which is particularly useful for occasions like this where I don’t know where I want to go to until I see it out of the window. 

So, with the hiking out of the way I had the baseball to look forward to.  Jamsil is only three stops from my apartment and I was able to leave in plenty of time. I picked up a ticket from a tout outside for ten thousand won which might have been just below face value. At those prices, it’s not so important. It was for the red zone though, which is the lower section, beyond first base, prime territory I reckoned for being knocked out cold with a stray baseball. 

Even busier than the hiking.

I was in my seat in time for the National Anthem. Everyone stands for it and most of the people, including the players, put their hand on their heart ’American style’. I couldn’t help but wonder whether that small minority of people who are born with their heart leaning more to the right than the left use the other hand or whether it’s more a symbolic thing. As I’ve no idea which side my heart is on I just stood politely with my hands by my side. 

The National Anthem.

It’s probably about time that I shared a bit more of the knowledge that I’ve gained about how baseball works. I’d sussed the scoring fairly easily, as well as when the players are out, how ’strikes’ and ’balls’ work, and I’ve covered all that in an earlier report, but what I wasn‘t sure of at that time was what all of the players did. How many there were, whether they all batted, how the substitutions worked? Well, I think I’m getting to the bottom of it. 

When a team fields, they have nine players, a pitcher, a catcher (wicket keeper for cricket aficionados), a fielder who covers first base, a fielder who covers third base and two fielders who hang around near second base. I think it depends upon whether or not the batter is right or left-handed as to which of them stands closer to the base. The other three players loiter in the outfield waiting for the big hits that evade the close in fielders. There are plenty of subs in the dugout in case any of them pick up an injury. 

This bloke fancied himself as a bit of a cheerleader.

Of that fielding nine, only the pitcher pitches. If he turns out to be having a ’mare’, he will be replaced by a different specialist pitcher from the subs bench. Once a pitcher has been subbed he can‘t come back on again. Or so I believe. When it’s the fielding teams turn to bat, all of them apart from the pitcher get a turn. The pitcher is replaced by a ’pinch hitter’ who only has to bat, not field. Easy life for him then. 

What surprised me is that the best batter doesn’t open each innings like in cricket, although I suppose the difference is that you only need three of them to be out for the innings to be over. Whichever of the nine batting players was due a turn next when the innings ends will get first turn in the next one. It all seems very fair really. I think the away team always bats first. 

Something I noticed about the catchers is that they both wore number forty-four and that they were both a little sturdier than the other players. I don’t know if this was coincidence or if that’s how catchers are. A bit like the way that ice hockey goalies are bred to be about four-foot tall and a similar width. 

The LG Twins starting pitcher, twenty year old Choi Seong Min, was actually playing as the starting pitcher for the first time and he did pretty well lasting until almost the end of the sixth innings before being substituted with only one Nexen run on the board. The Nexen starting pitcher didn’t do nearly as well and he was hauled out of the attack in the third innings with his team already 5-1 down. The big lead for the Twins meant that they could afford to experiment a bit in the last three innings and they tried a total of three relief pitchers, I suspect to give them all a bit of game time. 

LG Twins starting pitcher, Choi Seong Min.

If I remember rightly, Sam Malone out of Cheers was a relief pitcher. It must be quite a daunting role as you tend to be called upon only if the other team is hitting your starting pitcher all over the park. And that reminds me, I once got refused a drink in the Cheers Bar in Boston,  for not having any ID despite being twenty-three. It might have been different if any of them had known my name. 

Thats enough of how the Korean baseball works for now. The stuff that goes on in the crowd is much more interesting. Between innings there is usually something to watch despite there only being a two minute turnaround. More often than not it’s couples being made to kiss on demand to their intense embarrassment. Occasionally though, like today, there’s a little gem. The entertainment on this occasion involved small children being lined up for a head shaking competition. Each had a digital monitor attached to his or her forehead and they then had to violently shake their skull from side to side whilst the monitor counted the number of times that their brain revolved in its cerebrospinal fluid. They did all take a small prize back to their seats where I imagine they sat quietly for the rest of the game contemplating a future selling elastic bands for spectacles in subway carriages. 

I think he finished third.

It’s all made even better by the people who supply you with food and drink. Blokes with big containers of draught beer on their backs walk around keeping you topped up. Old biddies balance trays on their heads that contain cans of beer and a few snacks.  It all makes life very easy. 

None of this queueing in the concourse malarky.

And in a final score roundup, LG Twins finished up easy 6-2 winners. Whilst all this was going on an injury time goal gave Jeonbuk a 3-2 win over Daejeon Citizen leaving them in third place in the table, a point behind leaders Gyeongnam. Lee Dong Gook didn’t score and was subbed at about the same stage of the game as new pitcher Choi Seong Min had been for the Twins. Following their FA Cup quarter final exit last week Jeonbuk have a League Cup Final against Seoul to look forward to on Wednesday. Unfortunately for me it will be played in Jeonju and so I’ll not be able to get there.

Posted in Baseball, Cerebrospinal fluid, Hiking | 3 Comments »

Samsung Lions v Hanwha Eagles, Sunday 15th August 2010, 5pm.

August 22, 2010

The regular baseball season is drawing to a close and so I thought that whilst there’s still time I would try and get to see a game at a stadium that I hadn’t yet visited. There are eight baseball teams in the league, but as Doosan Bears and LG Twins share the Jamsil Stadium there are only seven different ball parks. Actually that may not be true as I’ve a suspicion that one of the teams from the south might play their home games at more than one stadium. Anyway, I’ve been to four of the stadiums so far and as Lotte Giants were playing away I was left with a choice of Samsung Lions or KIA Tigers.

Samsung Lions play in Daegu and when I found that the Daegu K-League team were also at home on the same day it was an easy choice to make. The football was listed as kicking off at four in the afternoon, with the baseball starting an hour later. I’d been to watch Daegu before and their stadium is only about thirty yards from the baseball park, so it seemed a pretty good piece of scheduling. I could watch their match against Pohang Steelers and then call into the baseball game which by that time should be no more than a couple of innings old.

Jen asked me if I’d like to accompany her to a barbecue that a friend of hers was having near Gyeongju on the Saturday and as Gyeongju is only an hour away from Daegu it all fitted together very nicely.

We got the bus from Seoul to Gyeongju late on Saturday morning. It was meant to be early on Saturday morning but when we turned up to get the tickets it was two and a half hours until the next departure. The silver lining was that it enabled me to get an overdue haircut. It’s probably thirty five years since I’ve been for a haircut with someone else and in those days I used to go with my Dad. To my frustration the barber would invariably direct his questions to him rather than me. In that mid-seventies era when it was a major source of embarrassment at school to have even the lobes of your ears exposed, you did not want the barber checking with your oblivious to fashion father as to whether he had taken enough off yet.

Generally over here, I get by in the barbers with a combination of mime and gesture and I’ve tended to survive. However, once the hairdresser realised that Jen could speak Korean, it was as if I was six years old.

“Does he want it grading at the back?” and “Should I shampoo it for him?” were asked and answered without any reference whatsoever to me. I half expected to be told to visit the toilet before I left and to be given a lollipop for sitting still. The shampooing was very enjoyable though, with my head being rinsed for a couple of minutes with cold water. The temperatures in Seoul seemed to have taken another step upwards lately and I could quite happily have foregone the barbecue, the football and the baseball and just remained in the barber’s chair all weekend with the cold water washing over my head.

The bus to Gyeongju took four hours and then we had another short connection to get to Doug’s house out in the countryside. Unfortunately our late arrival meant that the original barbecue had finished and the guests departed. Doug was a great host though and we spent a few hours with him and his girlfriend, eating and drinking in his front garden miles from anywhere, with a backdrop of the hills and his dog at our feet. Doug grows his own vegetables, makes his own cheese and had apple makkgeolli to supplement the beer. Whilst I love my life, every now and again I get a glimpse of someone elses and can’t help but feel that I’m missing out somehow.

The view from Doug's front garden.

At about ten o’clock we got a lift back to Gyeongju and checked into the nearest hotel to the bus station. This was quite a fortuitous choice as it’s the best hotel I’ve stayed in over here so far. For the connoisseurs of the idiosyncrasies of Korean love motels our room was on the top floor and had a six foot wide circular skylight above the bed so that we could look at the stars if there wasn’t much on telly. It opened and closed with a remote control and seemed a little like the sort of gadget that a villain in a James Bond film might use to launch missiles from an island hideaway. The room had disco lights in the bathroom and a small dance floor that also came complete with its own multi-coloured light show. We couldn’t quite work out how to switch off the flashing dance floor lights and so had to resort to covering it with a towel to diminish the effect. It had the usual love motel staples of a big flat screen telly and computer, plus the added bonus of a complementary bottle of red wine. I searched in vain for a humidor full of havana cigars but had I found them they would not have seemed out of place.

The dancefloor.

The next morning we went for a look around Gyeongju. It’s a town that seems to have a predilection for barley bread, with a shop selling it every five yards or so. We were going to look at the tombs rather than visit the bakers though, and in particular Cheonmachong, or the Heavenly Horse Tomb. This was the grave of some unknown royal from Silla kingdom and it had been excavated a few years previously giving visitors the opportunity to have a wander about inside. Disappointingly all the artifacts inside were replicas which made the sign stating that visitors should show respect towards what was an empty fake coffin a little bemusing. On the plus side, however, it was air-conditioned and so well worth the visit regardless of the authenticity of the artifacts.

The real stuff is in a museum somewhere.

We had a wander aroound the rest of the park, which resembled tellytubbyland, and looked at the other unexcavated tombs before getting the bus to Daegu where I had spicy tuna bibimbap for lunch.

Tinkywinky, La La, Poe and whatever the other one was called.

 This version of the rice dish was different to those I’ve had before as it’s eaten hot. It’s known as dolsot bibimbap and served in a red hot stone pot that I did my best not to burn myself on. Its an interesting variation and I quite like the way that the rice gets a bit crusty where it’s been in contact with the hot stone bowl.

We walked to the stadiums only to discover that the time of the football game had been changed and both matches now started at 5pm. Bugger. There was a large banner advertising the football and you could see where a patch saying `5pm’ had been stuck over the previous `4pm’. Quite why they couldnt coordinate the start times to accommodate fans who would like to see both games baffled me. The last time I’d watched Daegu, the conclusion of the baseball game coincided with half time in the football and the Daegu commercial staff were trying to entice the baseball fans into the football match for free. This time though, it was one or the other and as I’d seen Daegu play in their stadium before I decided that I’d rather watch the baseball.

After the previous weeks visit to the outfield at the Jamsil Stadium I thought it would be quite good to be a bit closer to the action and we got seats in the posh bit right behind the catcher for twenty thousand won each. They were front row and with a table in front of us for food and drink. The only downside was that it looked as if the roof didn‘t quite extend far enough to protect the first couple of rows if it rained. However, it was hot and sunny so I wasn’t too concerned.

On the way in we were given a bottle of chocolate water each. Yes, chocolate water. I’d heard of chocolate milk before, but this was a variation on those bottles of water that are usually flavoured with fruit or possibly more likely just sugar. I tried it, out of curiosity, and it was terrible. I like chocolate and I like water, but together, I dont think it will catch on. Fortunately there was another freebie, apple juice, to take away the taste and if that didn‘t work there was plenty of beer for sale.

The stadium was probably the smallest capacity of all those I’ve been to and there were plenty of empty seats. Samsung Lions are pretty much certain of their play-off place and perhaps Hanwha Eagles aren’t much of a draw. The home fans were loud enough, singing along at one point to Slade’s `Cum On Feel The Noize‘.

Like a lot of the games I’ve been to recently, the innings were being rattled through at a fair pace and within three quarters of an hour we had already seen the first three of them. It would have been even quicker had it not been for a lengthy delay for treatment after the batter had mistaken the catcher’s hand for the ball and tried to hit it out of the stadium.

Hanwha had the best of the early play including picking up a run when successive hits deep into the outfield that were both caught were in the air long enough to allow the bloke on first base to eventually make it all the way home. By the fourth innings though a Samsung home run had put the home side into a 3-2 lead.

At six o’clock it started to pour down with absolutely torrential rain that had the players running for the dugout and Jen and I scurrying to the back of the stand. Ground staff were quickly out with tarpaulins but the water was lying in pools around each of the bases. After a while I managed to get a glimpse of the Daegu game in the football stadium next door. The players were still out there, but it looked as if all of the fans were in the concourse.

I was waiting for the announcement that the match would be abandoned when the rain started to ease off and within a few minutes a combination of the drainage and blokes with brushes had cleared most of the water away. At seven o’clock we were off again. The only problem for us was that our front row seats were still ankle deep in water. Again the staff did the business and the excess was soon swept away and the seats and table dried off. We got another forty five minutes of action before the next thunderstorm arrived with the scores level at four apiece. We moved further back again, this time taking the seats of some people who had decided that enough was enough. A tramp had come in off the streets, more for a bit of shelter than the prospect of seeing the remaining innings I imagine, and he occupied his time by collecting up the uneaten fried chicken that people had left in their hurry to get away. He didnt seemed too interested in the chocolate water though.

We waited for the next lull in the rain and at half past eight we headed off to get the KTX not knowing if the game would be completed or abandoned. As we neared Seoul the baseball scores came up on the screen in the carriage and one of them had won 5-4. I don‘t remember which team won, but then I didn‘t really care. It’s still all about the occasion with baseball for me at the moment, rather than the result.

Posted in Baseball, Dead people and stuff, Haircuts | 3 Comments »

LG Twins v Samsung Lions, Sunday 8th August 2010, 5pm

August 11, 2010

This one should really have been all about Messi against Lee Dong Gook, Barcelona versus the K-League Allstars. The Catalans were in town last week, playing a pre-season friendly against a team made up of K-League players selected by popular vote. Lee Dong Gook got enough votes to start up front for the Allstars which would give him another opportunity to compare his talents with Lionel Messi, currently regarded as the World’s best player and only a few weeks after their last encounter in the South Africa World Cup.

It wasn’t a full strength Barcelona team by any means, all the World Cup winning Spaniards had been left at home and as the game drew nearer it looked as if Messi wouldn’t be playing either due to a lack of match fitness. The organisers kicked up a fuss, revealing that Barcelona had a clause in their contract stipulating thirty minutes of pitch time for the Argentinian and by match day the understanding was that he would make `an appearance’. I’m not a big fan of pre-season friendlies, particularly ones featuring mainly a reserve squad, but Messi is Messi. If I’m quite happy to travel a couple of hours to see a third division game, it doesn’t make sense for me sit at home when Messi is playing in the city where I live, even if he is likely to turn out for less than half an hour.

I’d seen him live before, playing for Barcelona in the Spanish and Champions Leagues and for Argentina in that South Korea World Cup game, but you can’t really have too much of a good thing. Unless it’s raining, that is. I came out of work at ten past six to torrential rain. Even with an umbrella I was soaked within fifty yards as the rain bounced back up from the tarmac and so I decided to go home and watch the match on the telly instead. Anyway, as I said to myself as I dried off, he’s no Georgie Best.

Messi came on as a sub after half an hour, with the K-League Allstars leading 2-1 courtesy of a very well taken Lion King header. The Argentinian missed a couple of chances and scored two good goals before being withdrawn at half time after what must have been the allotted fifteen minute compromise cameo. Barcelona’s reserves rarely seemed to break out of a stroll and finished up winning by five goals to two.

So, which of these two played for the Boro?

Jeonbuk were playing on Saturday, in a table topping clash with Seoul. I wasn’t going though as I was `teambuilding’ instead. This was a works day out that consisted of an early morning start, two and a half hours on a train, then an hour and a half on a bus, lunch at a seafood restaurant, ten minutes standing on a beach, fifteen minutes on the bus again, an hour at a tea plantation, another hour and a half on the bus, half an hour riding a `railbike’, another hour and a half on a bus followed by two and a half hours on the train.

My colleague Mr Park at the tea plantation. Later we had green tea ice creams.

Bonding through adversity was the objective I think, although the occasions where we weren’t being transported from points A to Z were very enjoyable.

The Sunday football games in the K-League were all kicking off too late in the evening for me to be able to get a train back the same day and anyway, I’d had enough of looking out of a window for one weekend. I went for a bike ride down by the Han river again, three hours this time, which just about finished me off. I’m starting to get the hang of the gears and so went a fair bit faster than usual. As I didnt fall off I regarded it as a successful morning out.

In the afternoon I went back to the river, this time for a boat trip in the company of the American girl I’ve been seeing.

The view to the North. It's the direction that the missiles will come from.

The trip was a very pleasant way to spend an hour or so, watching the waterskiers and people paddling about on surfboards. They had some pedaloes on the other side of the river, the ones that are shaped as swans, which looked like something that might be worth a future visit. One of the best things though was that the boat jetty was right next to the Jamsil Stadium Complex. That’s the one with the Olympic Stadium and amongst others, the Jamsil baseball stadium. As the boat trip finished at four thirty, it made perfect sense for us to pop along and watch the game between the LG Twins and the Samsung Lions.

The Olympic and Baseball stadiums. How convenient.

There were queues at the ticket office and so when we were approached by a tout I was quite happy to take a couple of tickets off his hands. He asked for twenty thousand won for two seats in the outfield, which is the bit furthest away from the action. I’ve never been in that part of the stadium so thought it might make an interesting change, but as the game had already started and I could buy tickets from the ticket office for six thousand won apiece, I certainly wasn’t going to pay over the odds. I offered him face value, which he accepted and then due to a bit of arseing around with the money he ended up with fourteen thousand. It didn’t seem worth arguing over a quid.

The seats in the outfield give you a great overall view of the stadium and made me wish that my camera could take wide angle pictures so that I could fit it all in. Actually, it has since occurred to me that it probably does take wide angle photos, it’s just that I’ve never done much more than use the automatic settings. Our seats were a little too far from the action though and next time I think I’d go back into the main stand. Still, like the boat trip, it was a very pleasurable way to idle away some time on a hot summers day.

It was wider than this.

Jen knows her baseball which is a bit of a bonus, and so I was pleased to be able to have someone to quiz on the bits that I hadn’t quite worked out. She has watched a fair amount of Major League Baseball in America and wasn’t overly impressed with the standard of the Korean League, particularly the amount of balls being hit behind. She was also a bit surprised at the way the fans supported their teams too. In America, you make a bit of noise to put the other team off. The inflatable sticks that the Koreans wave and bang together as part of their songs would be used at the likes of basketball games to try and distract the opposition at free throws. She was impressed though with the way that the losing LG Twins supporters continued to back their team all the way through the match, regardless of the score. In America, the fans demand success and a losing team would get the same sort of barracking that the Boro get these days whenever we aren’t a goal up within the first twenty minutes.

Samsung Lions, as you might expect from a team currently in second place in the standings, were always on top and finished up 8-3 winners. The defeat moved the LG Twins down in to sixth place and outside of the playoffs. With the season drawing to a close that’s not the position to be in unless you are looking forward to your holidays.

And whilst all this was going on, Jeonbuk Motors were playing at home to league leaders FC Seoul. Lee Dong Gook was suspended for that elbow in the chops last week but a goal from the Brazilian Eninho was enough to give the Lion King’s team the win and to move Jeonbuk ahead of Seoul. Jeonbuk were denied top spot though as former leaders Jeju United won 4-0 to regain pole position on goal difference. 

The crowd at Jeonbuk was listed as being over thirty thousand, but I’d expect it to have been more like twenty. It’s still a large turnout for this league though and probably not too dissimilar from the attendance at the baseball. Next week Jeonbuk travel to Changwon to take on third placed Gyeongnam who like Jeju and Jeonbuk are also on thirty one points. Before that though, it’s international week with Nigeria providing the opposition for South Korea. They don’t have anyone thats quite the standard of Messi, but I’ll pop along anyway.

Posted in Baseball | 3 Comments »

SK Wyverns v KIA Tigers, Sunday 1st August 2010, 5pm

August 9, 2010

I’d walked past the SK Wyverns baseball stadium at Munhak not long after I’d arrived in Korea, whilst on my way to an Incheon Korail game, but five months on I still hadn’t managed to get back there to see a game. The regular baseball season finishes this month so I thought I’d better make the effort to get there before it’s all over until next year.

I’d got back from my trip to Jeonju to see Jeonbuk Motors at around Sunday lunchtime and as the baseball game didn’t start until 5pm, I had a bit of spare time. Enough spare time to be able to ride down to the river on my bike. Sunday, as you would expect, is a much quieter day in Seoul than the other days of the week and so it was easy enough to cycle the twenty minutes or so from my apartment to the River Han. Streets that would normally be full of traffic and pedestrians are certainly a lot easier to negotiate on a Sunday lunchtime. Even so, I still spent most of my time riding on the pavements. Everyone does that over here, including the motorcyclists. Whether it’s kids on scooters or pizza delivery men, they all just ride on the pavement, venturing on to the road only when they want to use a pedestrian crossing or when the pavement is blocked by parked cars, fortune tellers, street vendors selling golf balls or sports socks and old blokes who have peaked too early on the soju and are sleeping it off.

Riding alongside the River Han is a lot simpler, there are dedicated cycled tracks along both banks and with very few uphill sections it’s easy to get into a bit of a rhythm. There’s usually something new to see as well, the on-going programme to install sporting equipment into just about every available space is progressing well and this time I noticed what I assume will be a temporary swimming area for the summer. Mind you, I don’t think there will have been much actual swimming going on. The place was full of families having a day out and the swimming pool had so many kids in it that it was strictly standing room only. There were that many of them packed together that I couldn’t be entirely certain that there was actually any water in there with them.

River Han

I rode westwards along the south side of the river for about half an hour before turning back. I knew the subway trip to Incheon would take a while and so I didn’t really want to be out on my bike for longer than about ninety minutes. Finding my way back to my apartment wasn’t as easy as you might think it would be. Firstly I have an absolutely terrible sense of direction and secondly, I can’t resist taking short cuts. Of course, if the short cut takes me off course, I can never quite seem to compensate properly and get back on route. Twenty minutes after leaving the riverbank I should really have been just about home. I wasn’t of course, but instead I found myself at a subway station that I recognised as one that I often visit for a haircut and which is at least a half hours walk away from where I live. Still, at least I know my way back from there.

When I first came out here I had long hair, it was dyed brown as I reckon that long grey hair makes you look as if you are one step away from sleeping in the gutter. With my dress sense I can’t afford to have too many other tramp like qualities, not if I want to get into bars and restaurants, that is. Unfortunately, the long brown hair was too much trouble to persevere with. If I cant express myself well enough to a taxi driver to have him take me to a landmark feature like a World Cup Stadium, there’s no way I could have explained to a hairdresser exactly what I wanted. So, to the disappointment of my colleagues, I had it all shaved off. I think that quite a few of them failed to recognise me at first and probably assumed that long haired waster who had previously sat at my desk had been sussed out and fired.

I tend now to visit the same barbers every three weeks or so, the one in the subway. It’s staffed by three Korean women who speak very little English, although they have managed to establish my age, job and whether or not I have a wife. As I already know what their jobs are and have little interest in how old they are or whether they have a husband, the conversations tend to be a bit one sided. I was in there last week for a number five cut, which is about the equivalent of a number three in England. I asked for a number three the first time I went in there and it was so closely cropped that my head squeaked when I rubbed it. So by trial and error, I’m now settled at a Korean number five.

The bloke in the chair before me wasn’t even getting his hair cut, he had just popped in to tell them his age and marital status before having his head massaged with an electrical contraption about the size of a house brick. I think I’d last seen something like it in a Victoriana museum, next to the stuffed kittens dressed up as a wedding party.  It was explained that in the olden days doctors used the brick-like vibrating device to cure `hysteria’ in their female patients. These days though it is apparently used to stimulate hair growth. An ideal piece of kit, I suppose, for a barber wanting to increase trade. The hairdresser pressed it against the head of the man ahead of me in the chair and vibrated his skull until I was convinced that his eyeballs would soon be hanging by their optic nerves, somewhere level with his chin.

You thought I'd made this up, didn't you?

One other notable item in the barbers is the machine where you pay. Instead of just giving your six thousand won (about three quid) to one of the women, you are supposed to feed it into a machine. As a foreigner, I’m not expected to be capable of carrying out this task and so I give my money to my hairdresser, she feeds it in to the machine for me and then when no change comes out she gets a key, opens up the front panel and manually extracts my change from inside. It all seems a little pointless and strikes me as not much more advanced than when we were in junior school and built a computer which consisted of a large cardboard box with one of the cleverer kids sat inside. You would write `6 + 3’ on a piece of paper, post it through the letterbox and he or she would return the answer in no more time than it took to find the bit of card with `9’ written on it. It was cutting edge technology in 1974.

I left my apartment for the baseball just after three o’clock. I’d remembered that last time I’d been to Incheon it had taken me an hour and a half to get there and so this should have been sufficient for a five o’clock start. As you might have guessed though, if you have been reading this stuff for a while, it wasn’t enough. One of the subway lines that I had to use went to more than one destination. Not just right or left, but different locations in the same direction. I wasn’t paying attention, got on the wrong train and by the time I’d retraced my steps and got to Munhak, I’d spent two hours, twenty minutes on the subway. To put that into perspective, thats about the same time that it takes to reach the far south of Korea on the KTX express train.

Wyverns fans at first base, Tigers at third.

Fortunately baseball games last for a long time and getting in to the stadium half an hour late wasn’t much of a hardship. I bought a ticket from a tout outside for face value, saving me a trip to the ticket office and ridding him of a ticket that I’m pretty sure that he thought he would have been stuck with.  I was very impressed with the Munhak Stadium, it has a capacity of 28,500 and for today’s visit of Kia Tigers it was near enough full, with some people even sitting in the aisles. I was allowed to go just about anywhere for my 7,000 won ticket, except for the really posh area behind the batsman. If I’d got there early enough I could have had a barbecue as there was an area dedicated to those who wished to cook their own food.

Barbecue area.

They also had standing areas, smoking areas and for those who like to stretch out a bit, they had a grassy section where people were having picnics, pitching tents or just sleeping in the late afternoon sun.

Munhak, better than Wigan.

A couple of years ago I went to watch LA Galaxy and they had a similar grassed area as the the upper tier behind one of the goals. It was a lot less crowded than today at Munhak, but the same principle and a pleasant way to stretch out and watch a bit of sport in the sunshine.

Los Angeles, better than Wigan too.

I can remember going to Wigan back in 1986 with the Boro and standing on what would have been a grassy bank behind the goal if the weather had been a bit better. Instead, on a day memorable for us seeing the floodlights of a stadium and nipping into a nearby pub only to emerge at ten to three to find ourselves outside the rugby league ground, we watched the game on that occasion from a mud heap behind the goal. No picnics, tents or barbecues back then.

I watched the baseball from a variety of vantage points, trying out the different parts of the stadium. Confusingly, the SK Wyverns fans waved red inflatable sticks, the colour worn by the KIA Tiger’s players. The SK Wyverns players wore white, whilst the KIA Tiger’s fans brandished yellow sticks. I soon got used to it though.

SK Wyverns fans

SK are top of the league with KIA down in sixth place. If SK can maintain their position until the end of the season it will give them an automatic place in the play-off final, a sort of Korean World Series. As for KIA Tigers, they would have to move up to fifth place to qualify for the post-season games and then play the team that finishes fourth. The winner of fourth vs fifth then plays the third placed team and so on. League position seemed to be counting for little though as KIA Tigers had taken an early lead by the time I arrived, a couple of home runs within the space of five minutes later in the game took them out of reach of SK Wyverns and gave the away supporters cause for celebration. 

After two home runs in a row.

As the game drew to a close at eight o’clock the visiting KIA Tigers led 7-0, which must have been quite a surprise for the table-topping Wyverns. 

Final score.

I got myself a tray of deep fried pork dumplings on the way out which were well worth the undoubted clogging of my arteries and they were certainly a lot easier to eat than the dried squid I’d had the previous evening. Fortunately I managed to select the right trains on the way back and by resisting the urge to attempt any short cuts I was back in my apartment no more than an hour and a half after leaving the stadium.

Posted in Baseball, Haircuts | 5 Comments »

Doosan Bears v Hanwha Eagles, Fri 30th July 2010, 6.30pm

August 3, 2010

This one was a bit of a last minute decision. I didn’t have anything arranged for Friday evening and as I was walking out of work I thought, yeah, why not? Fortunately, my apartment is only two or three minutes walk from my office and I quickly got changed, travelled the three stops on the subway and was outside the Jamsil Stadium for five past seven, thirty five minutes after kick off. That doesn’t sound right. Thirty five minutes after the first pitch is better, I suppose.

I’d had a few stares from people on the subway and realised it was my tee shirt that was interesting them. It was a British Sea Power one and it didn’t look like many of those doing the gawping were familiar with the band. I suspect that most thought it had some sort of nautical or military theme, although why some old bloke would be wearing it would probably have baffled them. They’ve had a bit of trouble with their Navy lately, so perhaps any mention of sea power is a little bit tactless. Mind you, the number of tee shirts that you see over here with complete nonsense written on them in English is incredible. I think the designers just select a headline from the newspapers and change a word or two so that a phrase that made no sense due to being out of context becomes doubly irrelevant by making no sense in any context. I suppose then that British Sea Power probably wasnt too much out of the ordinary after all.

Once at the stadium I dodged the blokes outside selling off their remaining boxes of fried chicken. I hadn’t had my tea, but wasn’t entirely convinced that the chicken would be at its best after at least an hour of being touted about outside the ground in eighty degree temperatures.

Despite the game having already started there were still a few people queueing at the ticket office. I got my usual eight thousand won ticket (thats just over four quid), for high up above first base. This is the area where the home fans sit, whilst the away fans tend to take third base. Mind you, I move around that much during the game it doesnt really matter where I get a ticket for.

I hadn’t even checked which teams were playing before I set out. The Jamsil stadium is shared by the Doosan Bears and the LG Twins, so there is pretty much a game every night of the week except Monday, which is the day off in Korean baseball. Tonight it was the turn of the Doosan Bears and they were playing the team from Daejeon, Hanwha Eagles. I’d been at one of the reverse fixtures the previous month and Hanwha had ran out fairly easy winners. Despite the previous score, it’s Doosan who have done the better of the teams this season and with not long to go to the play-offs they are currently third out of the eight teams in the league. Hanwha aren’t doing quite so well in seventh. The top five (I think) make the play-offs but I’ve no idea if Doosan are safely in there yet or whether Hanwha still have a chance of moving up to fifth.

There wasn’t a very big crowd at all, the lowest I think I’ve seen here, with the stadium less that half full. The visitors were already leading 4-0 as I took my seat and cracked open a can of Max. I’d missed the first innings and Hanwha’s second. Not that it makes a lot of difference to my enjoyment. Each team gets nine innings in total, so there was still plenty to see.

The early Hanwha runs were at odds to the rest of the game, where the pitchers had the most success, both sides rattling through their innings at a fair pace. By the time I’d finished my third can, we were already into the seventh innings and it wasn’t even half past eight. The crowd had swelled a bit as the evening progressed, it’s cheap enough to just drop in halfway through a game and still feel like you are getting value for money. I didnt recognise many of the songs but a little oddly, Doosan sang along in English to Modern Romance’s Best Years Of Our Lives, whilst Hanwha had a song that pinched the tune from Karma Chameleon. I felt like I’d walked into one of those Eighties nostalgia tours.

Not long after nine o’clock it was all over, I’d seen two runs in two hours of baseball with the visitors holding on for a 4-2 win. As I came out of the stadium the Hanwha players were already boarding their bus for the hours journey south, still in their kit. And the blokes I’d passed on the way in had just about got rid of their remaining chicken.

Posted in Baseball | 1 Comment »

LG Twins v Lotte Giants, Saturday 3rd July, 5pm

July 7, 2010

There isn’t much football going on in Korea at the moment. The K League is suspended for the duration of the World Cup and the National League is on it’s mid season break. Just to  complicate matters the third division, K3, is having some sort of mid season tournament which I’m struggling to understand, never mind explain. To make things even more difficult, the fixtures website that I use listed all of the K3 games for this weekend as taking place on Friday evening. That didnt strike me as unusual, as the National League often play most of their games on a Friday night. It meant though, that I wouldnt see a match this weekend as it’s a bit of a rush to make any of the stadiums after finishing work an hour or so before kick off.

So with no games on the Saturday I decided to go hiking instead. The group that I usually go with had organised a walk along the Bugaksan skyway, which is a ridge to the north of Seoul, overlooking a valley and famous for crested newts. As it turned out the newts didn’t prove to be much of an attraction and instead of the usual dozen or so hikers, just two of us, Jeong-ho and myself showed up. I’m possibly being a bit hard on the amphibians, as I suspect a combination of hot weather, the rainy season and it being the university holidays probably had more to do with the lack of interest. Anyway, we changed our plan and went for a walk along the old Seoul fortress wall instead.

Baddies would have to climb over this.

I’d never heard of this particular wall before, there is a much more famous one at Suwon which I walked around a few weeks ago, but the old Seoul remains were news to me. It was built to stop the Chinese attacking from the north and the Japanese from the south. Just in case either of them unsportingly chose to pop in via the east or west, the wall wrapped around the city in a rough circle. We didnt walk around the full eighteen kilometres, partly because some stretches are no longer there, but mainly because we couldnt be arsed, it was just too hot. After walking on the outside of the wall for a while and ending up in someones garden, we called it a day at lunchtime and headed back into town to get some food.

We ended up in one of their gardens.

We took a short cut through a school that Jeong-ho informed me was famous as the location for a Korean soap. As I hadn’t seen the programme, being in the grounds didn’t quite make my day in the way it seemed to be doing for the groups of women who were stood around taking each others photos. I’ll keep an eye out for it now though.

After a lunch of bulgogi, which is probably best described as mince soup, Jeong-ho went home and I pondered what to do with the rest of my day. Baseball seemed the easy option and as both LG Twins and Doosan Bears play their home games at the Jamsil Stadium, three stops from my apartment, there was an exceptionally good chance that there would be a game taking place at 5pm.

First though, I nipped into an art gallery. Sorry if this is getting less and less sport orientated, but it’s not really my fault. Jeong-ho had a spare ticket to an exhibition that ended the next day. He asked me if I wanted it rather than throw it away and so I thought, ok, why not. I probably would have just stuck it in my pocket and forgotten about it, but then I realised that he would ask me what I thought of the exhibition on our next hike and so decided that I’d better have a quick look.

It was actually in a museum inside the Doeksugung Palace, which is where the Kings and Queens of Korea had lived for about four or five hundred years until the Japanese knocked all that monarchy stuff on the head about a hundred years ago. The grounds of the Palace were interesting enough, with a few old buildings, but the exhibition, `Moon is the oldest clock’ was a bit too arty for me. One of the exhibits was twelve tellies, each showing a moon at a different phase. I didnt even bother scratching my chin and pretending to understand it all and left after a quick dash around.

 I did get to see the changing of the guard on the way out though so it wasnt a complete waste of time.

Anyway, it meant I had plenty of time to get to the baseball. First though, I’m just going to quickly mention a date that I went on earlier in the week. I don’t normally write about stuff like that, partly because it’s not that sort of blog, but mainly in case any of the women concerned somehow get to read it. I’ll risk it this week though. I was meeting a Filipino girl in a part of town near to where she lived and as she knew the area better than me, I suggested that she might like to pick the bars and restaurants. Lazy I know, but why not if you can get away with it?

It started off fairly much as normal with a visit to a Chinese restaurant where I think her intention was to check out my table manners and alcohol consumption. Then she took me on to an ice cream parlour. Not somewhere I’d have chosen myself, but I like ice cream so fair enough. I made a point of discreetly demonstrating my ability to get the ice cream out of the bottom of the cone with my tongue just in case she was still undecided about a second date.

`So, what’s next?’ I asked, anticipating a trip to a bar or two as we left the ice cream parlour.

`Norae bang’ she said. `Follow me.’

We went down a couple of flights of steps into quite a scruffy looking basement. It looked like the sort of place that often has internet cafes in them. No natural light and not much in the way of fresh air. We walked along a dimly lit corridor with a few doors leading off it. At the reception desk, she told the old bloke that we would like a room for an hour and I paid him the fifteen thousand won that he asked for. He told us which room was ours and we went in. It was quite small, maybe ten feet square, with a couple of vinyl covered sofas and a television screen on the wall. It smelt like an ashtray and lying on a small table in front of one of the sofas were two microphones and two books full of song titles.

Karaoke. Norae bang is karaoke, but private karaoke. I was beginning to regret my consumption of ice cream rather than alcohol.

My date was soon into her stride though, rattling out a selection of ballads, none of which I was familiar with, including one which she pointed out to me was a famous song from the film Titanic. Even after the explanation I must have still looked a bit blank.

`You know’ she said, `Movie about a big boat. Hits a block of ice and breaks in two.’

Which, as film reviews go, just about covers it.

As an uptight Englishman I struggled a bit, particularly without the relaxing effect of a few beers. I even had difficulty in making my selections, not wanting to pick anything where she might read any significance in the lyrics, before eventually mangling Green Day’s `Time of your Life’ and `Whatever’ by Oasis. The latter of which must have the longest fade out at the end of any song after the singing stops. I was stood there with the microphone in my hand for a good minute and a half wondering if Liam had gone for a piss and whether or not the words would suddenly reappear for a final rendition of the chorus.

It was quite enjoyable as a novel experience, albeit one that I won’t necessarily be in a hurry to repeat. As we left I could hear the sounds coming from other rooms and some of them seemed to have groups of maybe half a dozen blokes all singing, but sounding a little worse for wear than I was. I think that if the UK had Norae bang, the rooms would be full of teenagers drinking White Lightning or married couples looking to put a bit of spice back into their lives with a quickie in a different location. In Korea though, it seems that they just use them for singing, and judging by the smell, smoking a couple of packets of fags each.

Anyway, thats enough of that particular digression, back to Saturday nights baseball.

I was right in my assumption that there would be a game on, LG Twins were taking on the team from Busan, Lotte Giants. I bought a ticket in the upper tier for eight thousand won, right behind the batsman. Usually I like to sit further to the side, so that I can watch without having to look through the protective netting. Tonight though, I thought I’d start off a bit closer to the action.

The stadium wasn’t far off being full, with just odd seats available in most of the main curved stand, apart from a few together right in the corners. The seats in the outfield were probably about a quarter full. The odd thing was that there seemed to be as many fans supporting the Lotte Giants as were the LG Twins. Considering that Busan is a good three hours away on the fast train, that was an excellent turnout from the away team, although it is possible that a fair proportion of them may live in Seoul.

The game was high scoring which made for long innings and therefore a lengthy game. If you don’t know how long a match will go on for it’s difficult to pace yourself and I made up for a reasonably quiet week by knocking back enough beer to make even the prospect of trotting out a couple of Celine Dion tracks seem like a pleasurable experience.

Sitting in the sun, watching live sport is great, particularly when the first couple of cans kick in to just take the edge off the day. Keeping it up for over five hours though is probably a bit more than I want to be doing too often. We’ll see. The match itself was fairly even, with the lead changing hands, before eventually going to extra time after being all level at the end of nine innings. The fans were pretty evenly matched too, both taking turns to make plenty of noise, as is the custom, when it was their teams turn to bat. It was nice to see the Lotte fans incorporating the name of their city, Busan, into the songs too and well after ten o’clock they were finally rewarded with a 14-13 win.

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Nexen Heroes v KIA Tigers, Sunday 6th June, 5pm

June 7, 2010

I’m on a bit of a roll with this baseball malarkey and last night I went to my third game in five days. That’s part timer stuff with baseball though. I picked up a fixture list when I was at the Hanwha Eagles game the day before and discovered that in the five month season that runs from late March to late August, they have a match just about every night of the week apart from Mondays. Each team plays 124 games in 148 days, with each game being between three and four hours long.

I wondered about whether they sell season tickets and who would buy them. You would have to be pretty keen to intend to go to sixty two home games, sometimes on up to six consecutive nights as well. Mind you, the fans do seem dedicated; there is also a big away following at all the games, often up to half the crowd, so it wouldn’t surprise me if some fans saw most of those 124 matches. You would need a winter off after a season like that.

Tonight’s game was Nexen Heroes against KIA Tigers. Nexen were the home team and they have a stadium at Mokdong, which is about an hour away from me. There is a football ground right next to the baseball stadium but from what I can gather nobody plays there these days. It was about a ten minute walk from the subway to the stadium, the route lined with people selling those inflatable sticks that you bang together, beer, fried chicken and other snacks. I bought a general admission ticket for 12,000 won and went straight in. At the turnstiles security were confiscating soju, but didn’t seem bothered about beer.

Unlike the other stadiums that I’d been to, this one didn’t have seating in the outfield, just along the sides. It was full though, with people having to move their bags and food off seats to allow latecomers to sit down. There seemed to be more fans from KIA than from Nexen and both sets kept up the noise all game. Neither team had cheerleaders though, just a couple of camp blokes who led the chants.

After the comment about the lack of a starting pitcher from the Doosan fan the previous night, I kept an eye on the pitching this time. The starting pitcher for Nexen struggled a bit, eight of his first nine balls were wides and the KIA Tigers batsmen seemed to spend more time walking to first base than hitting the ball. Tigers took an early lead and were 4-0 up after three innings. The starting pitcher was replaced about half way through and his replacement was himself taken off a couple of innings later. It doesn’t seem like cricket where you would rotate you bowlers. In baseball it seems like you bowl your best pitcher until he is either exhausted or is getting hit too easily and then you bring on your next best pitcher and so on. It seems a big workload for a six games a week schedule.

Nexen hit back in the fifth innings with consecutive home runs and drew level at 4-4. It was still all square at the end of nine innings and they went into extra time. I thought they played an extra three innings each, but something I’ve read this morning leads me to believe that they might just play single innings until someone wins, but to a maximum of three extra.

I didn’t stay till the end though. Three and a half hours was enough for me. The extra hour that three more innings would warrant is fine if it’s your team that is playing, but as a neutral who doesn’t care who wins, I’d seen as much as I wanted to for that night. So I can’t even tell you who won. Maybe I’ll have to pick a team to follow and try and build up some allegiance. Doosan Bears seem to have the prettiest cheerleaders, so I’ll perhaps I’ll overlook their lack of a starting pitcher and give them a bit of a try.

And that’s it from Korea for a couple of weeks. I’m off to the World Cup next where amongst other games I’ll be seeing South Korea take on Argentina. It’s the game that Lee Dong Gook is aiming to be fully fit for, so I might get to see the Lion King come off the bench to take on Lionel Messi and co.

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