Korean Sports

You probably know that I spend way too much time watching and thinking about sports. Moving to South Korea has not changed this at all. In fact, going to sporting events here is so much cheaper here than it is at home, I almost get to satisfy my yen every week. For instance, Incheon has a team in the Korean baseball league. The quality of the play is roughly equal to that in AA or AAA in the U.S. The kicker is that the "cheap seats" (the equivalent of lawn seating at a Rivercats game, except that you actually get a seat) are roughly $2. $2 bucks!! Beer and hot dogs set you back about a dollar apiece (and you can bring your own into the ballpark). Not surprisingly, Korean baseball is one of the more popular pastimes for expats.
On top of this, the local team (the SK Wyverns*) is leading the league. This is rather exciting, since SK is the newest entry in the Korean league, and is the only franchise that has never won the Korean Series.
Baseball here is also "different" in many ways from the U.S. There are fewer home runs, and there is more of an emphasis on moving baserunners and manufacturing runs. Nearly all relief pitchers have, for some reason, been trained to throw sidearmed. The most important difference, however, is that there are dancing girls to entertain the home fans. (Koreans hire dancing girls for just about everything, from sports to the opening of a new store.) Actually, Korean baseball games are a bit like minor league games in the States, in that there are all kinds of contests and promotions to bring in fans. However, Korean baseball fans are very passionate. Whereas polite applause when the home team does something right constitutes "cheering" in the U.S., fans here cheer more like fans at European soccer matches. They sing songs, chant players names, and so on. Since Korea's such a small country, the visiting team will usually bring a contingent of its own fans. When they start chanting at each other, the stadium can get rather loud, even if there are only a few thousand people at the game.
Another fun experience was taking in the South Korea/Netherlands international soccer friendly. This was instructional for two reasons: A) The Dutch national team is really good. B) Koreans are passionate about their national team. The Seoul World Cup stadium (which is about the size of the Oakland Coliseum or Candlestick Park) was pretty much crammed for the game, even though Korea has not been playing well (all of the top players are hurt), the match was meaningless (a "friendly" for you soccer-philes), and the home team really didn't have a snowballs chance in hell of winning. Part of the attraction was the Dutch, of course, but most of the people were there to watch the Koreans, even though they are a shadow of what they were a few years ago. I couldn't imagine what the World Cup was like here in 2002. I should ask my co-teachers about that sometime. But I digress....

*Korean baseball teams are not generally known by the city they play in, but rather the company they're owned by (like Japanese baseball teams). The owner of Incheon's team, the SK Corporation, is the perfect example of a "chaebol" or Korean conglomerate. They have interests ranging from oil refining, to shipping, to telecommunications. The wonky way in which these corporate monoliths (and the Korean economy in general) developed is worth a separate post sometime. But not tonight.