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.