Daegu Discovery

I am always stimulated and encouraged by my solo trips of discovery in the Land of the Morning Calm.

April 21, 2018 was such a day; it was a second chance for me to visit Daegu, just an hour southeast from my own city in the middle of the country, and my first chance to catch a game at Daegu Samsung Lions Park.

If the name "Daegu" rings a bell in our year of the plague, it's probably because you've heard of that city in connection to the Covid crisis in Korea. A member of the Shincheonji Church of Jesus became a super-spreader in the city, and was largely responsible for kick-starting the virus spread about the country, and the eventual quick government response to shut things down.

But all of that was far in the future when I went to Daegu, "Colorful Daegu!", on this April day.  I had been in the city only once before, and was interested in digging into old and new haunts.  I've always appreciated, in one historical aspect, how Daegu was the front line of the "Busan pocket," the last holdout in Korea during the war, before the North Koreans were pushed back all the way north.

The old haunts included the street dedicated to Kim Kwang Seok, an activist folk singer who, sadly, ended up taking his own life in 1996.  I'm fascinated with this area in Daegu, and with this singer.  It's a time portal to a turbulent era in South Korean history, when crowds of people were marching against dictatorships (which in this case was as recent as the 1980's) when Korea had yet to make anybody's radar.  Spoiler alert: they emerged happy with a fairly stable democracy.

Protests against authoritarian rulers is a recurring theme in Korea, even as recently as 2016-2017, when millions of Koreans took to the streets and played a large role in the eventual impeachment and ouster of influence-peddling President Park Geun-hye.  Geun-hye has a connection to Daegu;  she was born there in 1952.

But residents prefer to remember Kim Kwang Seok, and his tragic history permeates this street, and the area has become as much a shrine as anything.  His ballads, soft-spoken and folk music centered, with a 1970's feel, are such a contrast from the pop-generated, synth-dance K-music that dominates everything now.  I always feel at home wandering that area of Daegu, drifting along to the recordings of his songs, which are heard via outdoor speakers throughout that area.

But there were plenty of new haunts too.  One of the first on that hot April day included Daegu National Museum, which contained an array of materials from prehistory to the Three Kingdoms period ... ceremonial robes, bronze daggers, tiger-shaped buckles, and Silla-era pottery.  Most importantly for me during this long day-trip, the museum offered a cool respite from the day's heat, and a chance for me to charge my phone and read a short story from my "best of" series.

There is a tendency for me to go somewhere new, even in hiking areas in my own city, just to change things up and get a new perspective, and this is what I did with this April day in Daegu.  Using my various phone transport  and mapping apps, and my T-mobile money bus card, I become Marco Polo with a modern compass, able to unlock exact buses and routes and stops in front of places like this museum.

But the newest thing, and the centerpiece of the day's trip, was my eventual trip to the baseball stadium, the home of the Samsung Lions ("New Blue!  New Lions!"), which required a trip on the Daegu subway out to the eastern end of the city.

As luck would have it, I had arrived with 16,453 other fans for "Darin Ruf Appreciation Night" and enjoyed all sorts of celebrations, including videos from his family in Nebraska, and his son Henry Ruf throwing out the first pitch, as I settled in with my Burger King set and beer in the Sky level seating (yes, the stadium had a Burger King).  People were even allowed to play on the outfield before the game.

Ruf, a power hitting outfielder/first baseman, who bounced up and down with the Phillies for much of 2012-2016, found a three-year home with the Samsung Lions, and was clearly a fan favorite during his tenure there.  He led the league in RBIs in 2017, and was having a decent 2018. It was nice to see the Lions treat their foreign hitter so well.  What can I say ... I'm sensitive to these things as a fellow expat.

The Lions are rich in history, and in winning.  One of the original six teams (from 1982), the Lions have won eight times, mostly recently.  Half of these titles came four years in a row, from 2011-2014.  Samsung, of course, is one of the major corporations in the country, and they are not shy about splashing the money to get decent players.  I once thought of them as the N.Y. Yankees of the KBO, and in this aspect, they are.

One of the most famous Lions, and indeed, most accomplished Korean baseball players of all time, is first baseman Lee Seung-yuop, whose visage, massive left handed batting swing, and retired number 36 are clearly displayed in all their glory on the right field wall.  Lee Seung-yuop played 15 seasons for the Lions in all, and he still holds the KBO records in six categories.  He hit 467 home runs in the KBO (and 626 home runs overall between Korea and Japan), won League MVP five times, and the Golden Glove Award ten times.  He retired in 2017, only a year before I saw this Daegu stadium, and was responsible for four of Samsung's titles, as well as two titles in Japan.  He almost played in the United States, but never came over.  One wonders what impact he would have made.

There's a wide-open and very new feel to the Lions stadium, which was completed only in 2016, and holds 24,000.  Sparkling in the home team blue and white coloration, there's a picnic and camping area beyond the right field fence, and a nice open area in left field which showcases the green of a local hillock.  You feel like you're entering a palace of baseball as you approach from the subway, with a giant "Golden Ball" smashing into "Blue Flower" metal sculpture to get you all amped up for the game to come.

Happily, the Samsung Lions made good on Darin Ruf night, winning 4-1 over the expansion KT Wiz, and Ruf had a decent night, hitting 2 for 3 with a run scored.  All the damage occured in the fifth inning, as Lee Won-seok belted a three-run homer as part of a four-run inning, and Lion starter Tim Adleman moved slowly but surely through six innings, allowing only the one run.

The big picture is a bit dimmer, however; the Lions have suffered in their shiny new ballpark, not having made the playoffs since 2015, when they lost to the Doosan Bears in their last year in the old Daegu baseball stadium, which had a maximum capacity of 5,000 people.  In 2020, they're off to a bad start, in 7th place out of 10 teams and below .500, despite help from pitcher David Buchanan (another former Phillie) and infielder Tyler Saladino (former Brewer/White Sox player).

The Lions are looking forward to the return of former MLB relief pitcher Oh Seung-hwa, the "Stone Buddha," but he has yet to make an appearance this year, as he has been serving through 30 games of disciplinary action and is expected to return on June 9.  There is also the prospect of future stardom in rookie left-hander Heo Yun-dong.

But even if the Samsung Lions don't win, and that's certainly the case of late, they've got a beautiful blue and white stadium to play in, and plenty of stories of former glory to remember.  And they will always have Lee Seung-yuop.  New Blue!  New Lions!

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We're on to the 7th inning jnow, and a trip northward almost to Seoul to the Suwon Baseball Park, the home of the newest expansion team, the KT Wiz.