Code Red at Munhak

The signs all proclaimed that we should "Rise Up!" when I traveled up to attend Opening Day at Munhak Stadium, home of the SK Wyverns, on March 24, 2018.

Maybe they were just trying to keep us warm.

With Code Red pollution levels, a murky haze covering the surrounding mountains, and temperatures beginning at 48℉ (9℃) and then dropping to 45℉ (7℃) with wind chill as the game wore on, it was challenging, to say the least.  But I arrived early, in my bulky fleece and cloth face mask, with hand warmers at the ready, and was ready to go with a bucket of fried chicken to warm my insides.  The saleswoman even gave me a free water to go with my food.

The 2018 KBO season was an oddity, the longest in the league's history, with rain and "fine dust level" (pollution) cancellations during the course of the spring and summer.  The league took a break from August 16 to Sept. 3 for the Asian Games, necessitating the March opening, and played long into mid-November.  It was also the year that I got really serious with my Korean baseball quest, knowing I wanted to catch a game in all nine stadiums.  I ticked off three more in 2018.

Pollution is a significant condition people face here in the Land of the Morning Calm, and it's a significant one with far-reaching health and mental ramifications.  I have gotten into the habit, for the first time in my life, while living here, of checking pollution-tracking apps on my phone.  I also have come to understand that when I look out my window in the mornings and see fog-like conditions, that this is usually ... maddeningly ... NOT fog.

Note: one by-product of the 2020 Covid situation is that for the first time, since I've been here, I've noticed blue skies and have actually gotten out of the habit of checking these aforementioned phone apps (which read a solid green most of the time).


But back to March 24, 2018.

Interestingly enough, and completely unknowable to me with my chicken bucket, sitting in frigid Munhak Stadium (also known by the ridiculously overwrought sponsorship name "Incheon SK Happy Dream Park"), I was watching the first step on a very long triumphal 2018 road for the Wyverns, who marched all the way through the next 7+ months to an eventual KBO championship, beating the Doosan Bears.  On Nov. 12, the fightin' Wyverns claimed the team's fourth title in history.

Munhak is large (25,000 fans eventually drifted in to fill the place during that game), but the place looked a bit "beat-up."  The field had all the appearances of an early-spring "just coming out of winter" look (with dirt patches here and there and a kind of unkempt appearance) but I appreciated the energy the fans brought, and my eyes kept wandering over to the left field outfield area, where tents were set up, and people were picnicking and having a grand old time in the chill.  But I would be lying if I told you that I wasn't also constantly looking up with amazement at the solid wall of "fog-not-fog" that surrounded all of us.

The Wyvern energy was there even as I came in to the stadium area, walking up to the ballpark from the subway (it had taken me at least an hour to get out to Incheon from Seoul), and I soaked in the sea of red banners (capturing various players in their pitching or batting glory) and settled in to my seat to a plethora of announcements and huzzahs as the game got started.  I still get into the expectant buzz before a game has begun, and hey, Opening Day is still Opening Day, even if it's late March.

With all that said, I'm going to be perfectly honest here.  I only made it five innings in Munhak, before the bitter chill got to me on that day.  When I left the game, the home dragons were ahead of the visiting Lotte Giants, 5-4, and they would eventually win a close one, 6-5.  The Wyvern's starter Merrill Kelly (a mainstay for a few years with the team before he signed with Arizona in 2019) struck out 10 in five innings, but left the game when I did, so he was denied the win.  Five innings is technically a game, and I rarely leave any game, but in hindsight I should have brought gloves and a winter hat. Others were clearly feeling the same; the crowd had thinned.

The enticements of Incheon city were calling me like a siren into the remainder of the evening.  The stadium is a bit inland but not far from the port area, where most of the action is.  Incheon is just west of Seoul, and is home to the country's airport, and there are myriad subway lines, trains and buses that connect the two.  Incheon also has a significant historical Chinatown area, and it's there that I eventually found the statue of Douglas MacArthur, who of course is famous for liberating the place from the North Koreans with his daring invasion from the sea in 1950.  After all this time, he is still remembered, standing tall in a park above the hubbub of Chinatown.

But back to mighty Munhak and the Wyverns.  I always appreciate a good angry dragon (and the Wyvern fulfills that role nicely although they seem to have some owl and a knight running around the stadium too) and a team that plays itself into contention more often than not.  The expansion team Wyverns have generally done this in the last few years, even though they are off to a wretched start in 2020.  After a particularly painful 10-game losing streak, and a balky bullpen and defensive miscues, they are solidly in last place this season.

Third baseman Choi Jeong, who was batting third that day and who drove in the first two runs with a solid single, really came into his own in 2016 (he has been with the team since 2005) as he started wailing on the ball (he hit over 40 homers and lead the league in home runs both years from 2016 to 2017).  In 2018, he "only" managed 35 long balls.  Canadian first baseman Jamie Romak joined the team in 2017, and has since hit more than 100 home runs.  The Wyverns also boasted a fairly formidable pitching rotation that year with Kelly, Angel Sanchez (now with the Yomiuri Giants), and longtime Wyvern Kim Kwang Hyun (now in St. Louis!)

I always found it a little odd how the Wyverns managed to win in 2018, as their team stats were awful (a recent check of the league's website confirmed this).  Their batting average (.233) was last in the league, and their team ERA was an unenviable 5.21 (third from the bottom).  But they did pull in over a million fans for the season, so they had the support.  Somehow ranked second at season's end, they gutted out a five-game victory over Nexen, and then took on the Bears, beating them in six games, the final win coming on the road at Jamsil.  So they earned it.  Good on them.  Three of their four championships, by the way, have been at the expense of the Doosan Bears.


Historically, the team has had a decent amount of success as they've only been around since 2000 (just before World Cup mania hit Japan and Korea).  During that year, the Hyundai Unicorns, who would eventually dissolve, left Incheon and moved to Suwon.  The league decided it was time to award SK Telecom a team, and the SK corporate leadership saw the vacancy and put the team in the Incheon area. The Wyverns' team colors, appropriately enough for that Opening Day 2018 and for all pollution-challenged games, are orange and red, loud colors in a loud bat-flip league.

Too bad the team is struggling this year.  Perhaps the Wyverns need a few more "dust level" cancellations, a nine-month season, and they'll right back in it.

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We're through five innings at this point (technically a complete game!), and we've got four more stadiums to go.  Next up, we head southeast to Daegu, to one of the original teams of the league, the Samsung Lions.

Jam-Packed in Jamsil

I walked into Jamsil Stadium in Seoul for the first and only time on July 28, 2017.

My first thought, upon reaching this big concrete bowl in southeastern Seoul, was "this place is big."  My second was whether or not my friend Aaron and I were going to get tickets.  I mean ... there were oceans of people coming out of Green Line #2, and alighting en masse from taxis and buses.

We had just spent the early afternoon hiking the most accessible piece of Seoul's City Wall, which is always a good thing to be doing when you're in the city, and had made our way slowly southeast south of the Han River to the evening game between the Doosan Bears and the KIA Tigers, via the ginormous Lotte World, and an equally ginormous samgyupsal (Korean BBQ) dinner.

To be perfectly honest, I do get overwhelmed a lot in Seoul.  It's a huge kind of place (New York masses of people), with almost 10 million inhabitants at last count.  I've made the mistake, only a few times, of getting on the subway in the center of city during rush hour, and while the Koreans have managed to avoid the infamous subway pushers of Japan, they do CRUSH onto the subway.  Trust me ... avoid this.

Jamsil tries to accommodate the city's population, and is one of the bigger stadiums in the country, fitting approximately 25,500 people.  Gocheok Sky Dome, home of the Kiwoom Heroes, which I had been to earlier in the same year, is the other stadium within metropolitan Seoul, and it's also south of the Han River.

In fact, Jamsil is so big (the stadium is part of the sports complex built for the 1988 Olympics), that it acts as the home stadium for not one, but two of the "original six" teams, the LG Twins and the Doosan Bears.  The Twins (formerly MBC Chungyong) have been using the park since its opening in 1982, while the Bears (formerly the OB Bears) moved there in 1986, so they are technically the usurper.

Thirty four years is a long time to be sharing a stadium.  Frankly, I find that hard to believe, but somehow they make it work, year after year.  Someone needs to move north of the Han River.

So which team do you root for?  Well, it depends on your predilections.  Do you like teams that win, especially those who currently win?  Then the Bears are your team.  Besides winning the first ever KBO championship back in 1982, Doosan has won five other times, and the Bears have competed in the KBO Series an amazing five years in a row, beginning in 2015.  They won the championship three times during this span, in 2015, 2016, and 2019.  It ain't a KBO series unless the Bears are there.

Or do you like hard-luck scrappers, teams that compete but who haven't quite put it together?  The LG Twins may be your choice then, as they have been off and on to the playoffs since 2013, but they haven't been to the final dance since 2002.  Their glory years were the early 90's; they won the title twice in 1990 and 1994.

Maybe you prefer to focus on players?  Over the last few years, the LG Twins have tapped into Red Sox and Orioles.  From 2015-2017, Dominican third baseman Luis Jimenez provided some power at Jamsil (after the Red Sox had claimed him off waivers and then designated him to Pawtucket in 2015).  This season, the Twins signed Casey Kelly (2008 Red Sox draft pick) to join former Oriole Tyler Wilson in the rotation.  Kim Hyun-soo, who played for the Orioles for two years, is also back with the LG Twins.

The Doosan Bears seem to have a talent for picking foreign players that will help their cause the most, and 2019 was the proof in the pudding.  Jose Miguel Fernandez, the Cuban defector who dallied with both Los Angeles teams for a time, and then found a home with Doosan in 2019, hit .344 in 2019, to help lead the team to the eventual championship, and to date is now leading the league with his .458 average in 2020.  Pitcher Josh Lindblom (after a successful 2018 with the Bears) arguably played an even bigger role the next year, winning the 2019 KBO League MVP Award after posting a 20–3 record with a 2.50 ERA and 189 strikeouts over ​194.6 innings (as well as his second Golden Glove award).  Lindblom parlayed his success into his current three-year contract with the Milwaukee Brewers, a rare but not isolated "transition back to MLB baseball in the US" from South Korea.

Another thing you could factor into your eventual choice is player longevity.  Both teams have retired two numbers, after long stints with either club.  Pitcher Park Chul-soon (#21) threw for the Bears from their inception in 1982 until 1996, and then coached the team for two seasons.  Twins outfielder Lee Byung-kyu played 17 seasons in Jamsil before hanging up his cleats in 2016, and the team retired his #9 the following year.

Or there are more recent cases, including Doosan's Kim Jae-hwan, who has run into trouble over the years with doping but who has also led the league in home runs (2018), and has been with the Bears since 2008.  More poignant for me, especially as a long-term expat, is the story of Dustin Nippert, who pitched for Doosan from 2011-2017.  The Bears fans, who loved Nippert, gave him the nickname "Ninunim" (the name was a combination of his last name and the Korean word for "God,").  He also won the KBO League MVP award (in 2016), one of only five foreign players who have won that since 1982.  Finally, in 2018, in his final and only year with the KT Wiz, Nippert became the first foreign pitcher to reach 100 wins in the KBO.  Quite a record of achievement for the former Diamondback, who made his MLB debut all the way back in 2005.

Or maybe your decision on who to root for comes down to one of the most important factors - mascots.  The Bears feature ... well, dancing silver bears, and the Twins rock with ... yes, you guessed it ... a pair of dancing Twins.  Yeah, I think I'm going to give that one to the Bears too.

Jamsil was quite the experience when I visited on that hot and hazy summer day in 2017, although we had to sprint around the stadium to the bleacher seats in right field (which had their own private entrance gate and ticket office) to find a seat.  It was a lively game, with just over 23,000 showing up, and it was the first time I witnessed a game that ended in a tie.  In Korea, games are allowed to continue until the bottom of the 12th inning before the tie goes into the books.  Because of this, my introduction to Jamsil lasted a good four hours and five minutes.

And it was quite the atmosphere.  Despite us being way out in the far reaches of Jamsil, planted in back of the right field foul pole, we did manage to catch a nice view of the game and of the hometown Bears fans on the first base side jumping up and down to their cheer leading crew.  Tiger center fielder Kim Ho-ryeong kept making spectacular acrobatic catches (I have at least three exclamation points on my scorecard for him) and we had a close-up view of all of those.

Doosan managed to tie the game, 3-3, in the ninth inning on a single by the aforementioned cleanup hitter (and DH) Kim Jae-hwan, but then both teams slogged pretty meekly through the overtime innings, with only one batter out of 19 reaching base on a single.  But well ... it was a hot night.  Everyone was tired.

It was time for the 23,000 to make their way home into the city of 10 million (and jam Seoul's subways once more).

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We're coming up to the fifth inning, and it's time to head west to the port city of Incheon, where the SK Wyverns play in the mighty Munhak Baseball Stadium, also known as the "Incheon SK Happy Dream Park."

Hermetically-Sealed Heroes

I have never thought much of seeing baseball played in the cavern-like confines of a domed stadium.

They are darkish, artificially lit, and almost always artificially turfed ... and you've nullified those subtle touches which imbue the periphery of the game - the breezes of a summer day, the sun going down slowly and covering section by section of the field, smoke rising from a BBQ shack located in the causeway beyond the outfield wall ... all of that.  Crowd noise is artificially amplified, encasing the entire game in a sterile, steel bubble.

It's the triumph of capitalism, really, as if the owners have said, "this game will be played and will make money, no matter the weather."

I've felt this in all the domed stadiums I've been in, from the Kingdome in Seattle to the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome in Minneapolis, and even across the border at the perpetually-broken Le Stade Olympique in Montreal.  I've been to games in all these thunderdomes.

But, truth be told, I was more than a bit glad to step inside a comfortable environment on March 8, 2017, as I marched through the cold drifts and winds of a Seoul snowstorm, and entered the Gocheok Sky Dome (home of the Kiwoon Heroes) for the first time.

I was there to watch the Netherlands take on Chinese Taipei (Taiwan really) in the first round of the World Baseball Classic.  Knowing full well that the Red Sox shortstop, Xander Bogaerts, would be suiting up for the Netherlands (or specifically Aruba), I made the trip north via Korail from Daejeon (only one hour away by train) and become one of a miniscule but loud 3,606 fans (in a stadium that fits just under 17,000 for baseball).

The Netherlands had more of the known quantities (Bogaerts, Jurickson Profar, Didi Gregorius, etc.) and everyone chipped in to squeak out a 6-5 win in the ninth inning via a bases-loaded walk.  I had originally purchased a cheaper ticket up high, but staffers wandered by and instantly upgraded my ticket, placing me in the second tier, directly in back of home plate among a crowd of scouts with their radar guns and scorebooks.  Yes, scorebooks!

That evening featured a panoply of unique "international baseball" moments: Taipei fans unfurling a giant flag along the third base side, Bogaerts' extended Aruban family standing up and cheering on the 1st base side, Baltimore Oriole Justin Schoop dapping an Orioles fan though the netting on the on-deck circle, and even Boston's Puerto Rican scout coming over to say hello, after he noticed my Portland-Seadogs-hat-and-Red-Sox-"Nomah"-jersey combination.  Directly behind me, an English baseball fan, with a large drawing pad, penciled in a portrait of the stadium as he watched the game (this was something he apparently tried to do at every baseball game).

A distinctive night during my Korean baseball stadium quest.

But since that represented the one and only time I've been at Gocheok, I have never seen the Kiwoom (formerly Nexen) Heroes play at home, for they are the regular inhabitants of this only domed baseball stadium in Korea, and one of three teams who play south of the Han River in the greater metropolitan Seoul area.

Besides playing in an inverted fishbowl, the Heroes do have the distinctive aspect of being the only team that isn't owned by a company, and are instead privately owned by stockholders (as now-famous Korean baseball website organizer Dan Kurtz explained on a recent Only a Game broadcast. Kiwoom (an on-line securities trading firm) bought the naming rights to the team in 2018.

The Heroes have that "new baseball team" smell about them, as they have been around only since 2008, and in the beginning, they were made up largely of the surviving members of the Hyundai Unicorns, a team which was disbanded in 2007.  The Unicorns, one of the original six franchises who began life as the Sammi Superstars, were actually a moderately successful franchise, as they won four KBO championships in 25 years.  They dominated the late 90's and early 2000's.

Unfortunately, the Heroes have been unable to add to this title success as an expansion team, but they have been a regular feature in the playoffs for the last seven years, have gone deep the last couple of years (they kicked Hanwha out of the playoffs two years ago), and even made it to the championship series last year, only to be swept by the Doosan Bears in four games.  They are scrappy, and they seem to be always in the mix of things at the end of the season.

The Nexen mascot is named Teokdori (Mr. Jaw) an odd humanoid who looks like an angry old man ready to yell at other teams to get out of his dome.

Park Byung-ho, who spent a year in Minnesota, is arguably the most famous Korean Hero, and is now back playing first base full time for them.  He seems to do much better in his birthplace.  In 2018, when he returned for a full season, he belted 43 home runs (tied for second-best in the league) after hitting only 12 home runs in MLB during his stint with the Twins.

When you follow the KBO for a number of years, you tend to associate certain teams with certain players.  The Heroes seem to seek out and retain durable foreign pitching help, while foreign position players come and go.  Jake Brigham, who came up for a brief time in the majors in 2015 with the Atlanta Braves, and then played in Japan, has been in the Kiwoom rotation since 2017.  Brigham follows in the footsteps of long term Hero fan favorite Andy Van Hekken, who was the KBO wins leader in 2014, and who pitched in nine (yep, NINE) countries.

There's a lot of interesting stories in the KBO if you look around enough.  Even if you dig a bit beneath the turf of Korean baseball's sole (and Seoul) dome.

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We're coming up on the fourth inning now.  Everyone has had a turn at bat.  Time to drive across the city, and visit Jamsil Stadium, the home for two KBO teams.

Seagull Serenade

"Sometimes you win.  Sometimes you lose.  Sometimes, it rains."

(Ebby Calvin LaLoosh)

OK, baseball kwest purists, I have a confession to make.

I never actually saw a baseball game at the cavernous Sajik Stadium in Busan, home to the Lotte Giants (Busan Seagulls).  It was a rainout.  But I did make my way out to the place, did purchase a ticket (eventually refunded), and did go into the stadium with my scoreboard, marched up to the top level, and stood in the entranceway, staring out at the rain-soaked field.

And for all these reasons, I'm counting it.  

Because in baseball, as in life, there are rainouts.

And there's so much to DO in Busan.  It was October 8, 2016, and I had come down for the Busan International Film Festival (BIFF) which is a "must-do" on my list every year.  The city had just been drenched by Typhoon Chaba, and even the BIFF beach area had been wrecked and left to the seagulls, and the Giants were finishing out a dismal 8th place (out of 10 teams) kind of year (which, unfortunately, has become something of a trend for them).

But I'm glad I made the trip out to Sajik if only for the sight of the Choi Dong-won statue, frozen forever in his pitching glory, and in this case, with a solitary bottle of soju at his feet, offered by a loving devotee.  Choi (who died in 2011) is a legend in Korean baseball for many reasons, but particularly for the "Perfect Game" against his rival Sun Dong-yol (of the then Haitai Tigers) on May 16, 1987, where he threw 209 pitches in a 15 inning complete game (which ended, quite appropriately, in a 2-2 tie).

There was a movie about this, my favorite Korean baseball movie of all time, aptly titled Perfect Game, (and yes, of course there is a subgenre of Korean baseball movies).  My second favorite Korean baseball movie is Glove, a based-on-a-true story account of a troubled player who ends up coaching a school baseball team for the deaf and hard of hearing.  My third favorite Korean baseball movie is the ridiculous Mr. Go, about a giant gorilla who plays for the Doosan Bears.

But I digress.

Choi Dong-won played a huge part in the team's 1984 Korea Series victory, in which the Seagulls beat the Samsung Lions in seven games. The bespectacled star started four times and threw four complete-games and even came in long relief in Game 6, throwing five shutout innings with six strikeouts. To this day, he holds the record for the most wins (4) and most innings pitched (40) in a single championship series.  Very Pedro Martinez-level badassery in this regard.

The Busan Seagulls (I love that nickname) are certainly a team of personality in what is one of the most unique cities in southeastern Korea, which is renowned, and rightly so, for its myriad beaches, fresh seafood, film festival, cliffside forest boardwalk trails on the ocean, and arts scene (it even has a monthly expat poetry slam).  And the stadium is the biggest in the country.  You can pack almost 27,000 people into Sajik.  I can see why the Seagulls would be on the must-visit list for most fans simply for the aura.

They are one of the "original teams" of the league (which was established in 1982), and are ancient by Korea standards in their lineage, going all the way back to 1975 when they first took the field as an amateur team, and yet have only won the big prize twice, long ago, in 1984 and 1992. Not to put too fine a point on it, but this Korean Series win total is only one better than the Hanwha Eagles.  They are, however, having quite the beginning to 2020, and seem to be having much more fun this year than they've been having in some while (6-3 record, tied for second in the league!).

Busan has some serious baseball street cred beyond Choi (whose 11 is the only retired number).  Seagull city is also the birthplace of Choo Shin-soo (who is one of the biggest Korean names in MLB) and Lee Dae-Ho, the former Lotte Giant-turned Seattle Mariner-turned back to Lotte Giant slugger, who had a monster year in 2010, when he hit nine home runs in nine straight games and emerged as an MVP of the league leading the KBO in seven offensive categories.  

Another part of this personality is Lotte's cheerleader Park Ki-ryang who is so well-known that she has her own YouTube channel, Instagram page, and a seemingly boundless social media presence.  She dances, cheers for a number of teams, appears on TV, and has even contributed to the push-back against the patriarchy in the Land of the Morning Calm.  

One of the things I clearly missed by not seeing a game was the famous "Busan Seagull" song which exists in various forms on the magic world of YouTube. On that day in October, there were a few other hopefuls who had wandered into the stadium, but they were as quickly gone as I was, and weren't singing anything on that dreary day.  Luckily, I dried myself off, took the subway back to BIFF, and caught the 8 p.m. main theater showing of "Heart of Stone," a German fantasy epic about a man who sells his heart to a forest-dwelling wizard.

Hey, sometimes it rains ...

But it can dump buckets for all I care, because it's the third inning, and we're hopping on the train from Busan (sans zombies) up to Seoul and watching baseball under the Gocheok Sky Dome.

Home Sweet Hanwha

Let me give you a little taste of my usual Hanbat Stadium experience, watching the hometown Hanwha Eagles.

Perched up high in the upper decks, scorebook in hand (the only person scoring in the stadium), with a Cass beer and Korean-fried chicken within easy reach,  you are afforded a broad view of southwest Daejeon in the lee of Mount Bomunsan.  This area of town is mainly known for car detailing shops and motorcycle repair places, and one of the best grilled fish places in town.

I know I may be a little biased, since this is my local baseball stadium, but there really is no better place to view baseball in Korea.  Hanbat can only fit 13,000 on a good day, and it's the smallest stadium in the country by far, fitting only half what most places do.

It's a beautiful afternoon, mid-70's, with dusk coming on, and you know the sun will be dipping below the right field stands, which is where the Hanwha faithful, an orange, black, and white sea of jerseys, are jumping up and down and singing, keeping syncopation with the cheerleading squad who are hard at work (or hard at dance) above the home team dugout.  Winny and Vinny Eagle are making the rounds.

There are specific songs for each batter; in this case, let's imagine it's the venerable "Oppa" Kim Tae-kyun (who first appeared as a 19-year-old Rookie of the Year in 2001 and who has worn the Hanwha jersey for all but two of his professional playing years).  A 6'1'' first baseman-DH, he hits the ball like a truck (308 home runs) but he runs like a 37-year-old.  The fans are gesturing toward the bleachers, signaling for a home run (again all in perfect harmony), but he strikes out with a mighty swing.

Below, in the visiting section of the stadium along the third base side, you can hear the shout, as the opposing fans (let's say it's the KIA Tigers) roar their approval.  They've brought their banners and flags  A sea of red jerseys.  They're as loud as the Eagles fans, but the lip of the upper deck muffles them a bit.  You can hear their chants, but you can't see them.

Another pitching change is coming up in the sixth inning, the third one for the Tigers, and that's normal enough.  It seems like a good many of the KBO games feature a turnstile approach to pitching, and there's rarely a complete game to be had in the league.

But what a fine way to spend a warm evening on in the remains of the day.

One thing to understand about the game in South Korea is that it's boisterous.  Not only do you have the ubiquitous giant-screen scoreboard barking out the usual batter updates, pitching changes, shell game whirl-arounds, and kiss cams, but there is this constant and enduring back-and-forth chant and song rivalry between opposing sides.  It's nigh impossible to fall asleep during a KBO game.

Unfortunately, with the Hanwha Eagles, you also have to turn down the heat on certain things, like the need to always win.  The Hanwha Eagles (né Binggrae Eagles in 1985, the first expansion team) have a sort of settled mediocrity about them, and this is an undeniable part of their story.  Their lifetime record is .474.  They win, they lose, they show up and play before their rapturous fans, but they've only been to the postseason once in the last 12 years (2018), and the last time they went deep in the postseason was 2006, when they lost to the Tigers in the KBO series.

That was a big year, 2006.  Ryu Hyun-Jin, then only 19 years of age, won Rookie of the Year and playoff MVP, and then ran off to everlasting fame with the Los Angeles Dodgers.  Now he appears on Korean TV most frequently, usually selling noodles.  An even bigger year was 1999, which was the one and only year the Eagles have won the championship in 34 years.

And yet I can't help but claim the Eagles as my "Korean team" when asked (and I am asked this often).  I've only lived in Daejeon in South Korea since 2014, and the stadium is only 2 miles away from my apartment (as the Eagle flies).  I've walked back from games in the middle of the night. After failing to see any games in 2014 (the last game of the year was a sell out), I finally got my chance to catch my first-ever KBO game in Hanbat on May 6, 2015.  And I've been going ever since.  In one fevered stretch, during the Chuseok holiday in September, 2015, I went to 4 games in the last 2 weeks of the season (3 wins, 1 loss!)

You can get stuck on numbers and wins, but I'd rather soak in the aura of the place, its nooks and crannies, intermingle and laugh with the fans and ushers who occupy the upper levels (and even sometimes occasionally sit down below with the cacophony).  There are so many fun details to be noticed. 

For instance, when I arrived in Daejeon in 2014, there was an article boasting about Hanwha's robot fans, which turned out to be mainly overblown (they mainly squat inert in one area of the outfield), but it was a much bigger deal in 2019 when the Eagles introduced the first foreign cheerleader to Korea, Frenchwoman Doris Roland.  She was more charismatic than the robots. 

Another local factoid is the team's connection to Chan Ho Park, the first Korean player to pitch over in the United States. Park grew up one town over in Gongju, where there's a gigantic billboard celebrating his achievement outside his high school.  After returning to Korea, he played his final season in 2012 for Hanwha.

Daejeon, smack dab in the middle of the country, is a town still working on an identity.  (I prefer the tough-but-fair moniker "The Dirty D").  The Hanwha Eagles have followed suit, switching their motto every year.  In 2018, the rallying cry was "Break the Frame."  In 2019, it was "Bring It!  No Matter What."  I'm partial to the first one, especially since it clearly paid off with a rare shot at the playoffs that year.

The Eagles have also had an interesting array of foreign hitters, from Jake Fox to the current Jared Hoying, and they like all other players, get a song (foreign players must love the fact that they get sung to). Eagle fans added their own unique pronunciation to Fox's last name, which sounded more like "Fox-u" when it was screamed out as he settled into the batter's box.  Hoying has some repetitive quality to his song that ends with the the shout "Hoy Hoy Hoy."  The game is worth it just to hear those.

Speaking of songs, the Eagles also had the BEST song in 2015, when they were celebrating their 30th anniversary in the league, the bombastic Mad Max-looking "Blazing," with Tiger JK, Yoon Mirae, and Bizzy.  They unveiled the song before every game that season, and the video contains a beatific montage of Daejeon-esque archetypes - a little boy dressed up and running about in his Hanwha Eagles uniform, an exhausted office worker buried under mounds of paper, an intense researcher-architect staring down a metal statue, an older railroad employee shoveling sand and huffing about with an overloaded wheelbarrow, and just for the coupe de grace, a delinquent college student wailing on a tire with a pipe.  That song still fires me up after five years.  I don't understand how they didn't win the whole thing just on the power of that alone.

Truth be told, I have yet to pick up a Hanwha jersey, but I do have my assortment of Eagles tchotchkes, including an orange rally towel I scored near the end of the 2017, a baseball with the Eagles mascot, and the bobble head of second baseman Jeong Keun Woo (now with the LG Twins) that I was handed for showing up to the last game of the season in 2015.  I have visited the gift shop frequently in Hanbat Stadium.

So, win, lose, or tie, it's always the right call to cheer for the Hanwha Eagles, who are rich in fan love, and Daejeon angst.

But we must leave the Eagles now, and get on a train heading southeast toward Busan.  It's the second inning, and the Lotte Giants are coming up to bat in the cavernous confines of Sajik Stadium.

KBO for everyone!

On July 13, 2019 (the day before my last birthday), I fulfilled the last step of a quest here in South Korea (or "Kwest" if you want  to play off the commonality of the country to stick a "K" in front of everything ... K water, K League, Korail, etc.), when I entered Changwon NC Park to watch the NC Dinos play the KT Wiz.

On that humid summer day, my solo challenge to visit all nine of the professional Korean baseball stadiums had been completed.  It took me just under five years to accomplish that.

Changwon Baseball Sculpture

Now I have another quest (Kwest), which is to complete this blog, by revisiting each stadium (and/or each team) in turn.

Why?

Let me offer five reasons.

First, and foremost, the Korean Baseball Organization (KBO) has "made" it to the big time, this being defined by a giant uptick of viewership by baseball-starved fans from the United States, who are now being fed a steady diet of games, on their televisions, in the morning and the dead of night, from the Land of the Morning Calm.

Another of the odd twists and turns of our "new normal" during this period of history.  International sports in the time of Covid.

I thought I would throw in some more information, and feed the thirst by US baseball fans (and any baseball fan really) to know a little more about the game on this peninsula.

Secondly, I'm fired up.  To be honest, this whole idea was prompted when a friend of mine forwarded a preview of the season (via ESPN). 

It was well written, and informative, but it felt strange, like my backyard (as a Korean baseball-obsessed expat) had somehow been invaded, as if a giant corporate-backed spaceship had suddenly landed on my grass, and had shouted out, "let me tell you a little something about your game."

I mean, it IS nice for everyone to come join the fun ... but it's a strange thing as well.

Third, I think I could offer a unique perspective.  I've lived in Korea since 2014, and have immersed myself in the Korean baseball culture since then.  I'm a resident of Daejeon, smack dab in the middle of the country, and my local team is the Hanwha Eagles, who play in a bandbox of a stadium, before adoring fans, and haven't won a championship since the mid-90's.  We're due.

Also, as I've already mentioned, I've been to every stadium in this country, and can offer on-the-ground perspective, which is something that others cannot, fill in the nooks and crannies with my roving eye.  All the player numbers and general observations offered up by international publications are one part of the story.  I would like to offer mine, often seated in the upper decks, with my scorebook, watching the game unfold, the fans dance and sing, and the game wind on through history.