This is long overdue and I am way behind on all the exciting things I've been up to. Rewinding quite a bit, I want to tell you about the baseball game I went to in September. I had been talking with some friends about going to see a baseball game for a while and we finally made in happen in mid-September. Baseball is pretty big here. The teams I saw play were the Doosan Bears and the Lotte Giants. The Bears are based in Seoul and the Giants in Busan (a beach area south of here). The options for tickets are assigned seating or you can buy the tickets for the outfield which is general seating. Either way the tickets are really cheap but the key with the general seating tickets is to get to the game early because they don't stop selling tickets even when they're past the number of seats available.
I went with two girls from school and we met up with some other friends. A nice thing about baseball games in Korea is that you can bring anything in that you want. There were men out front selling KFC and Burger King chicken boxes, burgers, and a variety of Korean food - mostly kimpop (I'll explain what that is later). You can buy a case of bear and bring it in if you wanted to. We settled for some drinks an a box of chicken, but next time I'll definitely be more prepared.
We were fairly early for the game but our friends were not, so by the time we got inside the park there were no seats. We found a nice place on the stairs though, and settled in. The atmosphere in a stadium was fantastic. Everyone was dressed up, each team had songs, and people were always yelling and cheering. I know we have all of this stateside but here people just seemed more energetic. On each side there was also a small stage with some cheerleaders, a drum, and a guy with a whistle leading the chants. On the left field side were the Lotte Giant cheerleaders, and fans and the Doosan Bears folk were on the right field side. They took turns and everyone was singing along. They also sold these plastic inflatable tubes for about a dollar, so everyone had them and kept banging them together. You can see the boy holding one in the picture above.
We sat on the stairs for most of the game but did manage to get some seats around the fifth inning. There were a couple guys in animal costumes (I don't know why) that had saved seats for themselves but then spent the entire game standing and cheering; so we helped ourselves to their seats. I mean, what exactly is a guy in a cow costume going to do about it? Something I thought was interesting was in the seventh inning all the players went out in the outfield and stretched. There was no "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" and the fans didn't really stretch, but the players did. The Doosan Bears won by a lot but it was a fun game. Here are two highlights (they don't neccesarily have to do with the players or the game itself):
1) The beer man. I only saw one guy the entire game walking around selling beer but I guess it makes sense since you can bring it in from outside. The best thing was that the beer man essentially had what looked like a keg strapped to his back. He had the tap hooked up and filled up cups of beer when ordered. The cups he wore in a sash across his chest. I was highly entertained and took a lot of pictures of him. I hope you will be too.
2) The Lotte fans with bags on their heads. Around the seventh inning I noticed the Lotte side of the stadium was slowly but surely turning orange. I was sitting far enough away I couldn't figure out what it was exactly but is seemed like everyone had put on orange hats - and I mean everyone. Later we realized that they were wearing orange plastic bags filled with air. . . on their heads. Someone with the team passed them out to everyone on that side. I think it's a really cool idea because I'm sure it's cheap (they're plastic bags) and suddenly half the stadium is in your team colors. We were a little dissapointed we weren't on the Lotte side but one bag came close and I was able to get a good picture. The other picture is everyone wearing their "hats".
Overall it was a great time. The weather was perfect for baseball and although the season is over now I will definitely be attending some games in the spring. It felt good taking the Wallis baseball tradition international. This one is for papa :)
