Batter Up!

This weekend was what I’ll call my “cultural awakening” to the city of Seoul. I met a whole slew of knew people—Koreans, Americans, Canadians, and Brits—and got a chance to really explore a couple of different neighborhoods of the city, including Gangnam, Hongdae, and Gangdong. But perhaps the most interesting thing I did this weekend was attend my first Korean baseball game: the LG Twins (of Seoul) vs. the Lotte Giants (of Busan).

On Saturday afternoon, I met up with some of the new people I’d met the night before, and together we headed to the Sports Complex, which is a large collection of sports facilities that includes one of the stadiums used for the World Cup in 2002 as well as Jamsil Stadium, home of the Twins. We came out of the subway and were immediately confronted with a massive crowd, thousands of people deep. Set up around the stadium were dozens of small booths and tables of vendors selling all sorts of Korean foods—dried squid and pickled radish, included—as well as some not-so-Korean-foods like KFC. Other vendors sold drinks, especially beer. It was a pretty amazing sight, almost like an entire market had sprung up for game time.

We waited on a long line for tickets, and when we got to the booth we found out that all the regular seats were sold out, so all that was left were standing-room. Not to be deterred, we bought a couple of those (they were only 6,000 won a piece, which is roughly $5, not bad when compared to Fenway) and then headed to the main gate. Before going in, we quickly finished our beers, only to find that you are actually allowed to bring into the stadium anything you buy outside, an extreme rarity at American or European sporting events.

We came into the stadium in the middle of the first inning, and I was immediately taken aback by what I saw. The 30,000+ person stadium was completely filled, the stands all red and white, with many fans wielding inflatable sound sticks used to cheer on the home team. And cheering they were; the atmosphere resembled a college basketball game, with the fans going wild at every single pitch and at-bat. I couldn’t believe that people were getting this riled up about baseball; you would almost never see that in the States, and I think I’ve been to some of the rowdiest and most fan-intense stadiums in America. These people were literally as crazy as just about any of the European football (soccer) fans I saw while in Europe last spring. On top of each of the dugouts were two crews of cheerleaders—one of which was dressed in long traditional Korean dresses, the other in rather scanty high school dancer outfits—that were leading the crowd in various orchestrated chants and cheers.

The bleachers were packed, so we followed suit of the dozens of other people with standing-room tickets and found places to sit on the cement stairs leading up to the seats. It wasn’t particularly comfortable, especially with people climbing over us every half inning to ascend or descend the stairway, but I think it still beat standing. We stayed until the middle of the sixth inning or so, then decided to leave, partially because it was a boring game (although my British friend didn’t really know the difference, anyway) but mostly because it was about 90 degrees with 1000% humidity in there, so I’d just about sweat all the way through my t-shirt. All in all a very interesting experience, one that I’ll definitely do again, especially if the weather gets a little cooler.