Monday, September 5, 2011

Baseball...the Korean way.

It seems strange that given my affinity for baseball, that I waited three years to attend my first professional Korean game.  However, this Sunday, after a three year absence from the presence of a professional sports stadium, I ended my holdout and attended a game between the Hanhwa Eagles, located in Daejeon, and the Nexen Heroes, located in Seoul.  The season in Korea ends a little bit earlier than the baseball season in the United States and these two teams were battling for the last spot available.  By last spot available I mean they were fighting not to be in last place.  Both teams had miserable seasons, and even with no chance at making the playoffs the atmosphere was something quite unique. 

First, the stadium was miniscule.  It might have held 10,000 people.  I equated it with a good sized college stadium, and I know the stadiums in Seoul and Busan hold more people, but Daejeon is not a small city.  The stadium was small, to give you an idea, here is a picture of it.  According to one website it holds a little under 14,000 people.  I think that might be pushing it a little, but if you include standing room I could see it. 

Now, given that both of these teams were fighting for last place, you'd expect in the last week or so of the season for no one to really care.  This however, was not true at all.  The home fans were loud and boisterous.  It was their duty to not only cheer on their players, but to heckle the opposing pitcher.  In the middle of the game the crowd suddenly shouted out "(insert pitcher's name) You're the shame of your team."  While not as creative, or dirty, as British soccer chants that's still pretty mean to shout at someone while they are pitching.  Imagine going to a baseball game back home and the entire stadium starts chanting an insult to an opposing player.  Besides the random quips and insults thrown at the visiting players, each player also had a cheer for when he was at bat.  Utilizing the ubiquitous thundersticks (picture provided for those that don't know) you would chant and cheer for the home team while they were batting.  Each player had at least one song/chant and this was also follwed by a little-league style chant that went "clap clap clap (insert players name) we want a hit."  Having attended countless baseball games as a child and an adult this level of devotion to cheering went against everything I knew of attending a baseball game.  This was an interactive experience not a passive one.

Another thing that added to the atmosphere was the entertainment between innings.  They had your standard activities: get up and dance, kiss cam, listen to music, watch the mascots do something funny, etc.  They also had a couple of things that seemed to belong more at the minor league stadiums back home.  My favorite, although I didn't participate was the beer chug competition.  They also had something that while not uniquely Korean, I'm pretty sure is uniquely Asian to the sport of baseball.  They had cheerleaders.  They had one guy whose job it was to lead the chants and cheers, and then they had several females, in various costumes throughout the course of the game, who would dance and do things like that. 




Perhaps the last thing about the Korean game, besides the interactiveness, the atmosphere, and the entertainment, was the price.  The best seats in the building cost 20 dollars.  The average seat price was below ten dollars.  Lets not even talk about the tall boy cans of beer for $2.50 or the whole thing of fried chicken for $15.  I know, it seems like hearsay but you actually don't get ridiculously overcharged at a stadium in Korea.  Quite simply, a family of four could come to a game, eat, mom and dad could drink, and have fun for under 50 dollars.  That's pretty ridiculous and awesome.