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."