Trail of the Lion King

The previous weekend I’d been down to Busan to watch Doosan Bears take on Lotte Giants in the fourth game of the first play-off series. Doosan had won that game to square the series at two games each before subsequently winning the decider to progress to the next round of games, this time with regular season runners-up Samsung Lions. This game was the third of that five match series and the first to take place at Doosan’s home Jamsil stadium.

I woke up that morning nearly four hundred kilometres away in Ulsan, where I’d been watching Lee Dong Gook playing for Jeonbuk the evening before. It’s a five hour journey or so back to Seoul which meant another early start.

I was at the Ulsan Express Bus Terminal by about ten to six in the morning, looking to get a ticket on the first available luxury bus. Whilst the first normal bus went at six, I had to wait until twenty past for one with the more comfortable seating. I whiled away the time watching the sun come up outside the front entrance.

Almost six in the morning

Five hours later I was back in Seoul and a couple of hours after that I met up with Jen outside the Jamsil stadium. It was busier than I’d ever seen it before with fewer touts selling and with lots of people holding up notices stating that they were looking for tickets.

Everyone was looking to buy, rather than sell.

We wandered around for a while near the ticket office but as nobody seemed to be selling any tickets we had to head back down the steps against the flow of the crowd into the subway where I’d seen a couple of touts as I arrived. We found one and after he made a big fuss of trying to conduct the deal out of sight we got a couple of 15,000 won outfield tickets for 50,000 won apiece. Whilst that seems expensive by Korean baseball standards, it’s still only twenty-eight quid which is about what I’d have to pay to watch the Boro back home. With our current form, the baseball seemed like better value even at the inflated rates.

The first two matches in the play-off had been shared, with Doosan winning the previous game two days earlier. Jen and I had watched the end of that match on Friday night in a bar in Gangnam. Earlier that evening we’d paid a visit to a coffee shop. Nothing remarkable about that, I hear you say, apart from the notion of me actually being in a coffee shop on a Friday night. Or any  night, come to think of it. This was no ordinary coffee shop though. This coffee shop had a Doctor Fish section. For those of you unfamiliar with this particular facility, it consists of a couple of fish tanks that are sunk into a platform. When you have swilled down the last of your fancy cat droppings latte, you can remove your shoes and socks and after washing your feet, dangle them into one of the fish tanks.

The fish then nibble away at your feet, removing surplus bits of dead skin, but leaving useful stuff like toes. I don’t know if the fish are specially trained or if it’s just instinctive, but they seem to know exactly what they are supposed to do without any prompting.

Why else would you go to a coffee shop?

We tried the tank with the small fish in first. These were about an inch long and reminded me a bit of whitebait. I kept that to myself though as the tables were turned tonight and I didn’t want any of them to nip me a little bit harder than normal in revenge. I’m not sure if our feet had more dead skin than normal or whether the fish hadn’t been fed that day but we soon had about twenty of the small fish getting stuck in to each foot. It was a mildly ticklish experience, probably a bit more enjoyable for us than it was for the fish.

They seem to like the slightly less hairy legs too.

Good as it was though, it was just delaying the encounter with the bigger fish. I shuffled across from one tank to the other and had a look. These fish must have averaged about three inches long and they returned my gaze, rising to the surface and opening and shutting their mouths like babies anticipating their bottles.

I sat there for a couple of minutes, teasing them by lowering one foot towards the water. Eventually, mainly because it would have been too embarrassing not to, I plunged a foot into the water. Whilst the small fish had been a bit peckish, this lot were ravenous and the water bubbled as if they were piranhas being fed pork pies.

I've caught smaller fish with a rod.

I used to have a tank of piranhas. When I got married the first two items I bought for the house were a dishwasher and a tank of piranhas. It’s no wonder that in the brief time we were together I was never trusted to go to the shops alone again. Anyway, one day the thermostat on the heater failed and the change in the water temperature caused the piranhas to turn on each other. As soon as one looked a bit weak, the others would attack it until eventually just one piranha remained. I think he died later in the day, probably from overeating.

Anyway, the good news was that the creatures nibbling my feet in the coffee shop weren’t piranhas. They could give you a decent nip with their gums though and the effect of about thirty of them fighting over the skin on my feet was a curious sensation. It was quite ticklish but was accompanied with a sense of apprehension that one of them might just get carried away and take a toe off.

Ouch.

After about twenty minutes we reckoned that it was probably time to move on, whilst we could still walk. My feet did tingle a little as we walked through the streets of Gangnam, no doubt smarting from the thousands of tiny bites that had just been inflicted. I’d recommend it though as a reason to visit a coffee shop. Even on a Friday night.

So, back to the Sunday and the third game between Doosan and Samsung. There were still around twenty minutes to the start when we made our way inside, but the outfield was just about full. Even the seats that had nobody sat in them had been reserved with coats, scarves and bags of food and drink. Eventually we found two together towards the back on the Doosan side of the scoreboard. There was still plenty of space in the reserved seats section of the main stand, in fact some of those seats remained empty for the entire game despite it being a sellout.

As the game started the Doosan fans released a few hundred white balloons into the air. I’d seen this done at a football game recently where the rain drove the balloons back down again and the ref had to stop the game for players to pop them. The weather was better today though and they safely floated up and away towards the flight path into Incheon Airport.

Samsung struck first and went 3-0 up in their first innings, their early dominance causing the Doosan starting pitcher to get hooked early in the second with the score having moved to 4-0.

Doosan Bears batting, Samsung Lions fielding.

Doosan fought back though and by the fourth innings they had turned the early deficit into a 5-4 lead, which gave their fans something to get excited about. A further run in the sixth innings took it to 6-4.

Bears fans.

Samsung drew level at six all in the eighth with two runs including a single homer from pinch hitter Cho Yeong Hoon. The Samsung fans weren’t as numerous or as vocal as the Lotte Giants fans had been in first play-off series, but they did have two sizeable inflatable lions to help compensate.

Even better than the inflatable tiger at Ulsan.

Whilst the Doosan fans might not have had inflatable lions they did have lots of balloons left over from their grand gesture at the start which were distributed for a display that didn’t quite match the one they had done with sparklers the previous week. They also made good use of those inflatable sticks that you bang together.

Not quite as good as having two inflatable lions.

Doosan had plenty of opportunities to clinch the game in the ninth but didn’t take them and we were into overtime. I’m guessing that’s what they call it anyway. The teams play up to three additional innings to try to separate them. What happens if they are still level after twelve I don’t know. Perhaps the team with the best inflatables wins. I was amazed at how many people were leaving as the extras innings were being played. This wasn’t some meaningless end of regular season game but the playoffs.

It was getting close to seven o’clock when after a scoreless tenth Samsung scored two runs in the eleventh, followed by a game winning three from Doosan Bears for a 9-8 win and a 2-1 series lead.

Woohoo, 9-8.

The lions were deflated and packed away, the remaining Doosan fans partied and we slipped away after almost five hours of a closely contested match. The next baseball game for me will be the second match of the Korean Series where the eventual winner of this contest will take on SK Wyverns at their Munhak Stadium next Saturday.

After watching Lotte Giants win away at Jamsil in the first game of the play-off series I wondered if there would be a need for a fourth game in the best of five format. When the Giants won the second game at Jamsil as well I was fairly sure that they would round off the contest 3-0 with their first home game at Sajik on the Saturday afternoon.

Fortunately, Doosan Bears managed to turn it around and a 6-5 away win on the Saturday brought the series score back to 2-1 and meant that a fourth game would be required after all. As all I had planned for the Sunday was going for a bike ride, I thought that I might as well get myself down to Busan instead to see a competitive game of baseball and visit a stadium and a city that I hadn’t been to so far.

With a two o’clock start to the game and a journey time of just under three hours on the KTX, I wanted to set off early. I left my apartment just after seven in the morning and was at Seoul Station for about ten minutes to eight. I quickly got a ticket for the 7.55 train and hurried towards the platform. I’d paid 71,000 for a first class ticket, the beauty being that they have single seats and I would be able to sit back and read my book in a bit of comfort. I briefly paused to get some gimbap for breakfast and then bought what I thought were sausage rolls. They weren’t of course, that would have been too much to ask for. The part that usually consists of sausage meat had been replaced with sweet potato. A similar thing happened to me a couple of weeks ago too, only it was pizza cheese that was substituted by sweet potato that time. Next week I’m planning on calling into KFC for some sweet potato wings.

KTX to Busan

The train set off on time and on looking out of the window about half an hour later I could see Sunday League football matches already taking place. Playing games at half past eight in the morning wouldn’t go down too well at home. When I used to play, a large proportion of the team wouldn’t have arrived home from their night out by that time.

I wasn't quick enough to photograph the footballers, so here are some orange trees instead.

A little later in the journey I passed Cheongdo station where I’d got the train to on the way to the bull fighting back in March. I didn’t see the stadium although I’m sure we must have passed it a little earlier.

It was raining when I got to Busan just before eleven. Hopefully it would brighten up before the start of the game, I didn’t fancy having made the trip for nothing more than a chance to catch up on my reading on the train. I’d been advised to have a wander around Texas Street which was opposite the station, but with the weather being poor I decided to get a taxi to the Jagalchi Fish Market instead. The first taxi driver had no idea where I wanted to go, despite me pointing at the Fish Market on the map I’d just been given at the Tourist Information Office. The second one I tried grasped it though and ten minutes later I was there.

The Fish Market is at the end of that street.

It was mostly in a large hall with lots of little stalls selling mainly live fish. They were sorted into the different species and kept in anything from buckets to tanks.

Excuse me, do you sell fish?

I watched a bloke pulling some from a bucket, chopping their heads off and gutting each one in the space of a couple of seconds. It was strange watching the severed heads still twitching and the headless filleted bodies flapping around on the counter for a while afterwards as he dealt with the next ones.

Better than some zoos I've been to.

I could have selected a live fish and taken it upstairs to be cooked for me, but it was a little early for lunch. Instead I went outside to look at the harbour and the surrounding areas. Whenever I’m somewhere like this I always have an urge to go somewhere by ship. It just seems like a better way to travel than by plane. Although I may change my opinion when it’s time to book my ticket for a fortnight at home at Christmas.

Busan harbour.

Alongside the docks were more market stalls, most of them selling a fixture of live and dead fish and some of them with a small restaurant attached.

Just outside the main market building.

By this time I was feeling a bit hungrier so I called into one that had a few pictures of their dishes above the door with English descriptions. There were a party of Koreans having a Sunday lunch of what looked like eel. I’ve never had eel and I was tempted,but I decided to go for the roasted shrimp at 20,000 won instead

The side dishes came first. There was some soup, which was pretty much just hot water with a few shells in the bottom, another dish contained a couple of bits of raw carrot, some raw onion, and a half a dozen monkey nuts still in their shells. The ’shrimp’ were what we call prawns in the UK and I was given about twenty of them. They were brought raw to my table, then wrapped in tin foil and cooked on a camping stove for a couple of minutes. They were very nice. It seemed a shame to dip them in the wasabi sauce that came with them, but that was pretty good too.

It doesn't get much simpler than this.

After lunch I wandered around for a bit more, watched some fisherman for a while and then had a look at the small stalls a street or so further back from the seafront. These tended to specialise in dried fish, some just in anchovies, carefully sorted into boxes by size.

It wasn't a particularly busy day.

By now it was quarter to one and I thought I might as well make my way up to the baseball. I got a taxi to the Sajik stadium, arriving about half an hour later. As we drew closer I could see that it was an open stadium, with a very large stand that looked to be fullish three-quarters of an hour before the start.

There were plenty of people still making their way towards the stadium though and I bought a ticket from the first tout I passed. I gave him forty thousand won for a twenty thousand won ticket. That was possibly a little over the odds, but it was still only about twenty two quid and if I’d shopped around I would have been unlikely to have saved much more than a fiver.

Taken on the steps on the way in to the stadium.

I went straight in, despite my ticket being for an allocated seat. At one of the food stalls near to my section there was sausage on offer. Real sausage by the look of it, not sweet potato sausage. I’d just had my dinner though, so I reluctantly gave it a miss and I got a couple of cans of Max instead.

That's more like it.

My seat was in the Giants section, beyond first base. With half an hour to go there were still plenty of empty seats, although the unreserved seating in the outfield area was already just about full. I watched the players warm up for a while as the Lotte fans took their seats around me. Most of them had either brought or were making cheerleader style pom poms out of newspaper. A club employee appeared and handed out about a dozen free large flags.

Lotte fans.

There didn’t seem to be many Doosan fans in the stadium unfortunately, which was a bit disappointing. The atmosphere at the Jamsil game I’d been to four days earlier had been the best at any game I’d been to over here and the approximate fifty-fifty split in support had played a big part.

That's an impressive stand.

There were a couple of large inflatable, well, inflatables I suppose, hanging over the stadium. There had been a bit of controversy the previous night when a ball that might have gone for a home run or may have been caught, did neither because it hit the balloon. I’d have expected one of the player’s Dads to have stuck a knife in it but both inflatables were still there, possibly on slightly longer ropes though.

The ball hit the other set of balloons, but I didn't take a photo of them.

The game was quite low scoring early on. Doosan Bears took a second innings lead, before Lotte drew level at two each in the fifth. This seemed to be the signal for the Giants fans to produce the orange plastic bags that they catch the air in and tie to their ears. I’ve no idea why either, but as I was in with the Giants fans I was given a bag and joined in.

I doubt I'd get away with it at Ascot.

Another interesting quirk was the way that Lotte Giants substituted their pitchers. The new lad would be driven onto the pitch in a soft-top mini, perhaps to save his strength for the actual throwing.

Bone idle.

The new pitchers and the plastic bags didn’t seem to help Lotte though as Doosan took a 3-2 lead in the sixth. The score remained the same until the ninth innings when Doosan seemed to step up a gear and Lotte went to pieces.

Lotte pitching to Doosan.

Jeong Su Bin whacked a three run homer that landed about five yards in front of me and then it all went a bit mad with Lotte seeming to panic a bit. With the bases loaded, one lad got walked, which meant another run and then some wild fielding enabled the Bears to put the game well out of reach with a total of eight runs in the innings for an 11-2 lead. The Giants pulled a couple of runs back in their final innings but the outcome had already been decided by that point.

So, two games each, with a decider at Jamsil on Tuesday to come.

On the way out I noticed the Busan football stadium. I’ll be back to take a closer look later in the month when Busan take on Suwon in the Korean FA Cup Final.

I'll be back.

I got a taxi back to the station and with half an hour to spare took the opportunity to have a look at the infamous Texas Street. It was probably more interesting after dark anyway. I was offered oysters by a bloke with a small cart and a good time by russian hookers who looked even rougher than their seafaring clients. With a train to catch I didn’t have time to take up any of the offers, nor to have a drink in the Havana club that advertised the intriguing option of ‘Spy Girls’’.

More like Rosa Klebb than Tatiana Romanova, I suspect.

And whilst all this had been going on Jeonbuk were limping slowly towards the playoffs. A goalless draw at home to the Army team Gwangju Sangmu was a poor result, although the point increased their lead over seventh placed Suwon to seven points as Suwon didn’t have a game.

Lee Dong Gook was back in the squad after being rested with the rest of the experienced strikers the previous week. He didn’t make the team though, with the Croat Krunoslav Lovrek being preferred up front. The Lion King eventually got onto the pitch early in the second half as a substitute for Luiz Henrique.

Next week Jeonbuk are away to fifth placed Ulsan Horang-i. They really could do with taking something from that game, particularly if Suwon manage to pick up three points themselves from their home fixture with Chunnam Dragons. I haven’t been to Ulsan yet so I’ll probably make my way there and see how Jeonbuk get on.

 It’s play-off time. No more meaningless regular season games, we are into the stuff that matters now. The first best of five contest was between the Doosan Bears and the Lotte Giants, with the winners then taking on Samsung Lions for the right to a place in the Korean Series against SK Wyverns. The Giants play in Busan, whilst the Bears are based three subway stops away from me at Jamsil stadium. They play the first two games at Jamsil, the third and fourth (if a fourth is necessary) at Busan and then (again if necessary) a fifth and final game at Jamsil.  

I’d popped along to the stadium the day before at lunchtime to see if I could get tickets but the offices were shut. I suspected that they were probably available on-line or had been at one point, but the English section of the Bears website wasn’t a lot of help.  

Not to worry, there are always tickets to be had outside. I don’t think I’ve ever not got into a game that I’ve wanted to, although sometimes I’ve paid a bit more than I should have.  I arranged to meet Jen outside the stadium at twenty past six, which was the earliest I could get there after work. By the time I arrived she had already texted me to let me know she had managed to get a couple of  tickets. She’d bought two 15,000 outfield tickets for 20,000 each. That’s not the sort of profit that will let the touts retire.  

Doosan fans, early on.

The outfield is free seating and at first we struggled to find seats. I’d say it was probably ninety percent full at that stage, with most of the remaining seats being occupied by coats, handbags and boxes of fried chicken. People were standing three or four deep behind the railings at the back of the terrace. We eventually found a couple of empty seats on the first base side of the stadium, which meant that we were in with the Doosan Bears fans. The crowd, including the outfield,  was fairly equally split between the two teams which surprised me when I considered that Busan is two hundred miles away. Looking across at the main stand, quite a few of the seats had yet to be filled. I suppose if you have a reserved seat and can’t get there for the start, it’s not so much of a big deal. 

We hadn’t missed much in that first half hour. One innings had been completed and it was still scoreless. It was noticeably colder though than the last time we’d been here. In fact it was noticeably colder than the previous weekend. It seemed as if we had gone from summer to winter within three days. Autumn is supposed to be the best season over here and I’d been hoping that it lasted a little bit longer than seventy-two hours. 

Something else that had changed were the player’s averages. Whenever a new batter comes in his number of home runs and average is shown on the scoreboard. It’s very handy for someone like me who cannot tell one player from another, to be able to see which of them are the high scoring players. Not now though, all the averages are set to zero again for the play-offs. For the first couple of innings I was under the impression that both coaches had for reasons unknown sent out teams of rookies for their biggest game of the season so far. 

Both sets of fans were entertaining, the home fans all blew up and waved white balloons early on. 

Doosan fans with balloons.

Lotte Giants responded with a couple of large surfers that must have taken some manhandling to get them to an away game.  

How did they sneak those in?

They then followed this up with the wearing of blown up orange plastic Lotte supermarket bags on their heads.  

Look closely, the orange things are supermarket bags tied to their ears.

Impressive, if a little mad, particularly when one of them would  have to go to the bar by himself.  

It looks better in a crowd.

Finally the Doosan Bears fans managed to distribute sparklers to everyone in their section bar us.  

That's much better than plastic bags tied to your ears.

It’s probably not surprising that I wasn’t given a sparkler as I have a bit of history with them. As a small child I was given one to hold and as it burnt downwards towards my hand I passed it over to the other hand, grasping the burnt, but still extremely hot, other end.  

Because she was sat next to me, Jen wasn't allowed a sparkler either.

That was the last time I was trusted with a sparkler. Perhaps my Mam had been in touch with the Doosan fans to make them aware of the risks of letting me join in.  

Not that I'm bothered, but even small kids got a sparkler.

The game itself was close and the advantage switched around early on. The Giants went two up in the second innings, causing the three Doosan supporting girls in front of us to complain bitterly to anyone nearby who cheered and to suggest that they clear off to the other side of the stadium. Generally there isn’t any bad feeling amongst rival supporters here, or at least I haven’t noticed it. Perhaps with the stakes being a bit higher, the passion is starting to show a little more.  

The Doosan fans cheered up in the fourth innings as the Bears took a 3-2 lead, before relinquishing it in the fifth as the Giants nudged back in front at 4-3. In the sixth it was Doosan’s turn again as two more runs took them into a 5-4 lead, only for Lotte to level it up at five all in the seventh.  

Still level after the 8th.

After a scoreless penultimate innings it all went wrong for the Bears in the ninth as a Jeon Joon Woo home run for Lotte sparked a Doosan collapse that led to another four runs in quick succession. We left with the score at 10-5 and that’s how it finished.  

There are plenty of restaurants around the Sports Complex area and as neither of us had had our tea that’s where we went. It’s a fairly busy area and as we ate the chicken that had been cooked in a big bowl at our table we were able switch attention between the match highlights on the telly and watching the drunk blokes outside trying it get their even drunker work colleagues home safely.  

Near the Sports Complex.

If the play-off isn’t over after the first three games, I’ll probably nip down to Busan on Sunday for the fourth one.

The baseball season has been limping towards the end of the regular season for a while now, with the four play-off positions having been determined what seems like ages ago. This though, really was the end, the 133rd and final game for each side.

I hadn’t even been aware that this game had been on until my friend Paul and I arrived to watch the Incheon v Jeonbuk football game at the stadium next door. The final few fixtures tend to be ones that have been re-arranged, often at short notice and the information can be a bit unreliable. Earlier in the month I’d turned up at this stadium for an advertised game only to find that the Wyverns were actually playing two hundred miles away in Busan.

As we were here though, it would have been a shame not to have gone in and watched. They have beer and pork dumplings and it was a sunny day, although starting to get a little cooler as summer finally seemed to be slipping away. There’s times when I would have paid far more than the eight thousand won ticket price to sit in an empty stadium for that combination.

Late afternoon, late summer, late season.

SK Wyverns are top of the league and they will be going straight into the final of the Korean Series where they will play whichever team emerges triumphant from the play-offs. It won’t be Nexen though, they have had a poor season and have ended up second bottom of the eight teams.

With the result not really mattering both sides took the opportunity to give some of their fringe players a run out. SK used a couple of pitchers in the early stages that Nexen didn’t have any trouble in taking a few runs off. At 4-0 down in the third, with the bases loaded and the game slipping away, SK decided enough was enough and brought on a pitcher who, judging by the enthusiastic reaction of the home fans, had at least played the game before.

I've no idea either.

The new lad rattled through the Nexen batters at a fair rate, stopping them from scoring any more until it was decided to give someone else a turn in the seventh innings. At that stage though it was still 4-0 to Nexen, the SK Wyverns batters demonstrating the same apparent unfamiliarity with the sport that the early Nexen pitchers had.

The food stalls were quiet too.

It all changed in the eighth innings though as SK decided to send in a couple of blokes who at least managed to grip the right end of the bat. Nexen tried to cheat a bit by deliberately pitching wide and ‘walking’ them, or at least I assume they did, perhaps the throws were as close as they could get.

Time to light the sparklers.

It couldn’t last though and SK quickly rattled off four runs in the eighth to bring the scores level. It stayed that way until as close to extra innings as you can get. SK had two men out in the ninth when, with a bloke on second base, the batter cracked one far enough for his mate to get home for a 5-4 win. It made for an exciting end to what was a meaningless but enjoyable fixture.

5-4

The crowd was pretty good though, with the stadium being about half full and the Wyverns fans keeping up the support to the finish. There weren’t many there from Nexen, but I suspect they have already put away their gear until next season.

At the end the lights were dimmed for a lap of honour and the Wyverns players threw baseballs into the crowd. An interesting thing to do in the dark.

Mind your heads.

The evening’s entertainment finished with a pretty impressive firework display to round off the season in style. It would have been well worth going even if they hadn’t had any pork dumplings.

That's all, folks.

It’s the play-offs now and I’ll be looking to get to at least one of each of the three pairings, probably ending up back at this stadium in about three weeks time where I expect to see a capacity crowd.