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.
Mister Jaw!
ReplyDeleteMister Jaw is the man!
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