An Introduction:
After conquering Japan like a first-movie Godzilla, the next stop on the hit list was South Korea, home of an eight-team league with the second-largest following in Asia. Before we get started, I think it might be a good idea to give a brief primer on Korean baseball and how it differs from its Japanese counterpart, especially for those of who read about the Japan trips and know a little about Asian baseball:
1) There are eight teams in one division in the Korea (as opposed to twelve and two in Japan).
2) Similar to the Japanese, all the teams have corporate sponsors who own the teams (LG, Doosan, Sansung, etc.). Unlike the Japanese, the geographical locations of the teams are almost never associated with the team (e.g. "The Lotte Giants," and not "The Busan Giants"), and even the team name itself is generally subjugated to the corporate owner. (Fans cheer for "Lotte," not "The Giants.")
3) All the teams use the designated hitter (unlike only one division in Japan).
4) With the exception of a handful of national holidays, weekday games start at 6:30 PM and weekend games start at 5:00 PM. (And on the dot.)
5) All the teams play the South Korean National Anthem before the game. (There is a part of the South Korean National Anthem that sounds exactly like a part of the original
Battlestar Galactica theme. It is important not to laugh.)
6) Similar to the Japanese, there is a home and visiting cheering sections. Unlike the Japanese, these sections aren't centered in the outfield bleachers, but instead are right behind the home dugout (the first base dugout for all but two of the teams). Most convert the area on top of the dugout, or an area near the dugout, into a stage, usually with speakers and drums. Most of the stadiums also have similar facilities on the visiting side for the opposing team.
7) Teams have an MC that is in charge of all the cheering. This is done with team-specific cheers, and often involves sing-alongs using American songs with Korean player names replacing parts of the lyrics. Since nearly all Korean names are three syllables long, anything with three beats of lyrics are fair game. For example, "Happy Together," such as "I can't see me lovin' nobody but you, Park Yun Min." "Surfin' USA" is another big one for some reason. The MC is generally in charge of all the cheering, and gives the crowd directions in the cheer before they start. Most of the cheers involve using thunder sticks. Unlike the Japanese (who favor solid, hollow sticks), the Koreans seem to prefer inflatable sticks, and they have less flag waving and fan participation instruments. The cheering itself is less rigidly executed than it is in Japan and is generally more passionate and enthusiastic. Cheering for each side is generally done during their time at bat, though a failure by the team at bat or a great play in the field may prompt the other team's fans to chime in.
8) Between each inning, the cheerleaders usually do a dance routine to entertain the crowd, though there are sometimes more American between-inning events, such as fan "skill" or dance contests, or (god help us all), the Kiss cam. I can't imagine any more solid differentiators between the Japanese and Korea game than that. A dance cam or, god forbid, a kiss cam in Japan would go over about as well as a "desecrate your parent's grave" event with the more serious and buttoned-up Japanese.
9) Dear lord is there drinking with a capital "D." Not an eye is blinked when fans bring in multiple cases of beer with them. Many fans are completely rocked by the later innings, but it never seemed to get ugly. You are also allowed to bring in your own food, so it was not unusual to see fans walking around with big boxes full of beer and food to last them through the game.
10) After the game, they do a hero interview the way the Japanese do. They build a small stage on the field, and then they do interviews and sometimes give prizes to MVP of the game (sometimes the best pitcher and hitter in the game), which is broadcast up on the scoreboard. After that, there is usually a prize giveaway of autographed merch from the MVPs that they throw into the crowd, and maybe some other stuff from the cheerleaders, MC, or mascots. Taking it to another extreme, sometimes the visiting team gets to do a hero interview if they win the game, which is taking good sportsmanship to a whole other level (and is unheard of in Japan).
Alright. On with it.
On Getting Things in the Wrong Order
Wednesday, June 20, 2012
Queens, NY
Outside of the Game:
This sad tale begins the day before, where at work, I decide to have a frozen yogurt. What could be so wrong with such a tasty and healthy treat? The end of my gastrointestinal system as I know it, apparently.
I had
difficulties for the rest of the day. I had visited my doctor on Monday to get an allergy shot, but I had to go to the immediate care place again on Tuesday because I couldn't leave work to go to my primary care during the day, and I couldn't fly without getting this attended.
According to the doctor, there was something or other going around, and it resulted in a rather serious rebellion in a rather essential part of my body. After a test or two, it was discovered that my gut had left the building and the only recourse was to shut it down completely and reboot. So I was contrarily given a strong antibiotic and a strong pro-biotic, and then delivered orders to have them fight it out to the death inside my stomach. What could
possibly go wrong? I may be the only person to get traveler's ailments
before leaving for vacation.
Not having any breakfast for obvious reasons, I went off to the airport on the day of my flight. I had been assured by the good folks at Asiana airlines that I needed to be at the airport a minimum of three hours before departure, so we gave ourselves two hours to get to JFK from Hoboken, and it would turn out that we would only need one and a half of them to get there. There was some traffic, but nothing out of the ordinary, and we managed to cross our two rivers without much ado.
I was going out of terminal 4, which seems to be the "Miscellaneous Foreigners" airport, including Asiana. Because terrorists, I had to check in at the airport counter to get my boarding pass. I managed to change my seat to an exit row, but they informed me that my carry-on bag was too heavy to
carry on and had to be checked. This led to two things. The first was a quick strip-down of said carry-on for anything that I needed to live. The second was knowing exactly how much minimum weight I was going to be dragging around for the rest of the trip (14 KG, for the curious). I checked the bag, and then spent an hour going through security.
To be fair, this was the first time that I could legitimately say that the problems rested more with the passengers than the TSA. There was an El Al flight leaving before mine, and let's just say there were a bunch of folks with entitlement issues who, nearly to a person, believed that the rules surely didn't apply to
them. This led to the line taking much longer to clear than it should have.
Once through security, I had a good two hours to kill and not a lot of terminal to murder it with. I had the complete lay of the land in under a half hour, and then, after chancing a plain toasted bagel, I went off and played video game for most of the rest of the time. (There was a Galaga machine and a NASCAR racing thing, and let's just say it was a long two hours.)
I was eventually a little concerned by the lack of plane, but about an hour before we were supposed to leave, a plane landed and unloaded its passengers, and magically, a full crew showed up out of nowhere. After an announcement in Korean that I surely did not understand, the entire flight crew rose up in a way to put drill teams to shame and boarded the plane en mass. I ceased worrying about the flight at that point. Clearly, this was an organization that had their business together.
We boarded the plane on-time and without incident. In the exit row with me was a 20-something Korean guy and some manner of bigwig doctor. The crew was fawning all over him, and he was getting first-class treatment even though he was back with the herd.
The guy next to me made some small-talk, and I had to explain why I was going to Korea. He asked if I was a baseball scout and predictably looked at me as though I was a crazy person when he found out I wasn't. As any good nerd should, I came up with a socially acceptable explanation for his question a good hour or so later: I'm a writer. It is technically not a lie. Look at me right now: I am writing. I think that might go over as a less crazy explanation of why I am doing what I am doing that "baseball fan with more money than common sense, and deep, deep boundary issues." Despite my clear sanity issues, he was nice enough to help me make heads or tails out of the entertainment system, which did make a bunch more sense once he helped me set them to display in English.
By my closest approximations, the flight took just about forever. I managed to keep more or less to the awake/sleep schedule the plane suggested, but there was not a lot to break it up, especially at meal times when I just grabbed the most bread-looking things I could find and drank some water. There were naps, and books, and movies, and I would bet my life that time actually stopped at some point. There was nothing particularly unpleasant about it, except the duration, much like a Kenneth Branagh movie.
There was some people-watching to be had. One of the only other Caucasians on the plane was having a rough flight, so for a good portion of it, she was parked right across from me in landing seat for the flight attendants. Being close to the bathrooms and one of the only walk-around areas in the plane brought a lot of children. With minor exceptions, the kids were all insanely well-behaved and serve as yet another glaring indictment against America and all things American.
As we were making a passive-aggressive right turn around North Korea, I saw a Korean baseball movie in the entertainment selections called
Perfect Game. It is tragic that I noticed it so late in the flight because it was damn near the thing in which I was most interested. It was a weird quasi-biopic about a legendary 80s baseball game between the two best Korean pitchers at the time. The story begins with Team Korea playing Canada in some tournament (and outside of a Michael Moore movie, how many times are the Canadians ever the bad guys?), where the younger of the two pitchers watches in awe as the older pitcher goes out with no rest and a split finger and strikes out the side to hold onto a win. And then... the movie presumably ends, because what I just saw was the end of a sports movie. Except it wasn't.
Fast forward a few years. The younger pitcher, now pitching for the Tigers, wins the Korean MVP award at a dinner that very much looks like a corporate awards show. The older pitcher (playing for the Giants) looks on grimly. Though still the legendary pitcher of his generation, his generation has passed, and the younger is ascendant, and he begins to have to field questions about how he feels about his younger competition now winning all the honors.
The story is a fairly straightforward progression towards the two pitchers facing each other in the aforementioned "perfect game," but there are a ton of side stories thrown in. There is the new female reporter for a Korean daily who, for some reason, knows nothing about baseball and is desperately trying to get a scoop after being threatened with termination by her Perry White-like boss. Her lack of baseball knowledge is not a weakness of her gender, as shown by her roommate, an insane baseball fanatic who at one point incites a riot when a game is sold out. The reporter, driven by her boss, eventually publicly shames the older Giants pitcher by asking him about his declining skills, prompting praise from her boss and horror from her colleagues.
There is also the side story of the back-up catcher on the Tigers who is desperate to get some respect from his son and wife, the later who keeps begging him to quit his low-paying baseball job so that he can help support the family. Also, the son of the former Giants coach is getting in trouble for showing up late for practices because he is secretly caring for his ailing father. So we have our soap opera established.
All of this is tied around the developments in the two pitchers. The by-the-book, honor-before-all aging Giants superstar is forced to loosen up after his former coach's funeral and realizes that the brutal public dressings-down he was giving the younger player were the result of him caring for his father. He also reconciles with a teammate with whom he had grown apart because of his aloof perfectionist image.
On the other side, the younger Tiger pitcher, after numerous public scandals about his carousing, grows to dedication to the game that he had been missing for his career up to this point. He bonds with the washout backup catcher to perfect his form. The reporters realize that a series of rainouts have aligned a match-up between the two pitchers that will serve as a tie-breaking contest between the two, who have each won one of the previous two meet-ups.
And then the game is on... and the flight ended, so I'm not quite sure how this ends. Also, since this was "based on a true story," lord only knows how much of this is close to real. That said, the fact that a lousy catcher not properly providing for his family and a (for the most part) unflinching martinet are held up as heroes does say a lot about the state of Korean baseball, or at least their mythology thereof.
The Accommodations:
I was on the plane all day. At some point, Wednesday turned to Thursday, but again, I take the liberty of making the point when I stepped off the plane in Korea as the start of the new day. Because I can.
On Blue Suede Boots on the Ground
Thursday, June 21, 2012
Seoul, South Korea
Outside of the Game:
Everyone stumbled from the plane into the Korean afternoon. Groggy, disoriented, and with a violently disagreeable stomach, I set forth unto a new land. Since I had yet to pick up my officially heavy bag, I was moving along pretty quickly to wherever I was going, unburdened by 14 kilograms. The first stop was immigration, which had no line, and then I was on to get my bag, which I had in under five minutes. And then I was on to customs, which involved dropping off a form. It was then just a matter of working out how to get to Seoul.
I entered into the main terminal at Incheon International, and literally one of the first things I saw was two Korean Elvis tribute artists singing on a big stage in the airport. This has now become something of a running theme on these trips, especially after Elvis Night last year in Chicago. Well played, Korea; well played.
I stopped to get some money from the international ATMs at the airport. Unlike in Japan, apparently "international" really meant "international," instead of "mostly international." I got my money out easily enough, but in my jet lagged, mush-headed state, I didn't quite know if I had just taken out $50 or $500. The decimal points always get you in the end.
After some searching, I found the desk where I had to turn in my train pass voucher. I got my pass and all my scheduled tickets for the trip fairly quickly, and then had to find the express train into downtown Seoul. I got my separate ticket and got on the next train to find a fairly Japanese level of train competency. Clean, quick, and on-time, the train arrived in Seoul, and then the adventure began in earnest. I had worked out for the most part how I needed to go on the subway to get to my hotel, but that's the thing about theories: they'll get you in the praxis.
The first part was an epic hike up stairs and escalators from the airport express trains, through the regular train station, and the bus station, before I got to the subway station, all with 14 kilograms of bag. Then it was a matter of working out the best way to get to my station. I managed to pick one of the longest. Nevertheless, I ran into a nice Chinese couple who asked me in English if I had been here before, I said that I hadn't, and after he said he had been here once, I jokingly said I'll follow him then. I'm not sure they got the joke. We talked for a while, and as I explained that I didn't have my subway map (in my bag somewhere), that I was traveling alone, and that I had a general idea of where I was going, they looked at my with great concern in a way that I clearly understood to convey "Whitey, they aren't even going to find your shoes." We parted ways at a transfer station, and I'm fairly certain that they expect me to be dead by now.
I eventually got to the station by my hotel. It turns out that my hotel in located in the Sinchon market, a bustling area of narrow streets packed with tiny shops of all imaginings. After a helpful local pointed me in the correct direction, I managed to locate the PLEX Hotel, check in and drop off my stuff, and head out to see what was there.
The market was a busy place, located a short walk from one of the two baseball stadiums in Seoul proper. It was hopping on a Thursday night, and if anyone ever tells you that Koreans don't drink like champs, you punch them right in the face, because by around 8 PM on a Thursday, a small sampling size of 100% of the people I ran into on the street were utterly, utterly hammered. I walked around the streets for a while before remembering that they were playing a game that night, and headed over to the ballpark. I got there right as the game was letting out, and the streets were eventually swarmed with happy home team fans and the stadium quickly drained towards the bars and clubs in the market, to forever end any danger of sobriety.
I walked back myself and noticed a number of baseball-related booths mixed in with the food stalls and clubs. There were a tiny indoor batting cages where guys bashed baseballs to impress their girlfriends, and then the girlfriends took a turn so they could giggle at each other. Right around the corner from my hotel was a pitching booth. It wasn't just a speed pitch booth, but it had a dynamic strike zone projected on the backstop with an anime baseball girl standing in. A different section of the strike zone got highlighted after each pitch, and you got points for not only how fast you threw, but if you threw a strike, and bonus points for hitting the highlighted zone. As I watched, a young girl went up and hit her target zone with every pitch, and then one of the proprietors asked me if I wanted to try. The implication, of course, being that if a little girl can do it, surely I could.
Effectively shamed, I paid my 2,000 won (just shy of $2) and warmed up so that I would at least be reasonably mobile the next day. To my credit, I was better than average on the accuracy, but when I tried to put anything on the pitches, I ended up in the next lane. I believe the girl had a better overall score than me, but none of you can prove that. After my great victory, I walked around the corner to the hotel and went to bed, or at least laid down until I slept for a bit.
The Accommodations:
For my first stop in Seoul, I decided on a hotel right near my first game. The PLEX Hotel was located right down the street from Jamsil Stadium and fit the bill admirably. It was my first encounter with the weird amalgam motel... thing I would run across. The first floor of the hotel was a parking garage right off the street. The lobby of the hotel was only accessible from this garage, but all the subsequent floors were guest rooms.
I wasn't quite sure what I was expecting from Korean rooms, but outside of the hotel's odd layout, the room itself was about right. Along one wall was a small counter with beauty supplies and a desk of a sorts, with a giant TV above it, while built into another wall were a window, a refrigerator, and a welcome water cooler. The bed was tucked in to the opposite wall, and the small bathroom was around the corner. It had a tiny tub and Japanese-style electric toilet from the future.
Along the desk wall, there was also a small PC set up. It turned out that this was a machine dedicated for movies, but if you closed out the movie app, you could also use it as a regular computer. This was later confirmed to be fairly common in Korea, as some kind of DVD jukebox thing. Among the movies you could watch was the baseball movie from the flight, but there were also a whole bunch of adult features in there as well, and even though there was not indications of any charges to watch the movies, I didn't want to risk it.
The room also came with a can of mosquito spray (ecologically friendly mosquito spray, if the can could be believed). Though I would find out this is also a common feature in hotels in Korea, they apparently are there for a reason, as I was eaten fairly alive the first night before learning to do a diligent spraying before bed.
On Getting Started with the Baseball
Friday, June 22, 2012
Lotte Giants vs.
LG Twins
Jamsil Baseball Stadium
Korea Professional Baseball
Seoul, South Korea
6:30 PM
Outside of the Game:
This was first full day in Korea, and jetlagged as I was, it started early. I managed to sleep until 6 AM, and then unable to get back to sleep, I was out into the new world. My first piece of business was to call my family and tell them I was okay. After a brief expedition to a local convenience store to find a calling card, and some timely assistance from the hotel staff, I was able to make my call. That just left the rest of the day.
With everything still closed in the early morning, I headed off to Asia Park across the way from the hotel to do some walking around. I was not alone, as the park was teaming with older folks out taking part in an organized exercise program. I got my constitutional while watching them, and as the group was breaking up, the first of the restaurants was opening up so I could grab a proper breakfast. Fed and at the time in the morning when the cultural attractions were actually open, I decided to try my luck going to one.
Beside a quick ride the day before, this was to be my first real encounter the with Seoul subway system. It turned out to be much like the Japanese subway system, if not as preternaturally clean. Not to say it was dirty or anything, but it didn't have an army of workers constantly wandering around catching any stray piece of garbage before it even hit the ground.
The subway lines were well-organized, with easy-to-follow maps and signs to let you know where you were and where you were looking to go. The entire system worked on RFID cards, and buying a ticket was a little more confusing than it had to be. To buy a one-way ticket, you had to pay the fare and then a "rental" fee for the RFID card itself. I eventually found out that you can get that nominal fee back if you turn in your card at machines set up for that purpose, but it was more involved than needed and not at all clear.
In addition to the regular sort of safety posters and equipment, each station has an emergency locker filled with supplies such as respirators in addition to the more mundane first aid supplies. In case you were wondering what they were for, they run videos in some of the subway car monitors that explain how to use them, which makes a certain amount of sense, except in
how they go about doing it.
They have a looping video presentation that shows a terror attack on a subway station, complete with special effects, showing what to do, if, for example, there is a gas attack. Now imagine for a minute what would happen if they had semi-realistic videos of terror attacks running in the subway cars in New York. I'd imagine rioting within the first day of their implementation.
I managed to make it to my destination without any rioting, which in the this case was the National Museum of Korea. This was my first day being able to do any real touristy stuff, so I decided to jump in feet first by going what was the South Korean equivalent of the Smithsonian.
If you say nothing else about the museum, you have to acknowledge its scope. The museum building itself is simply humongous, and it is situated on an even larger campus, complete with outdoor exhibits and its own lake and waterfall. So it certainly has majesty going for it.
Once you can make the long walk to the entrance, for no charge, you can get into the enormous building itself that holds the main exhibit area. Although admission is free, you have to pay to get electronic tour guides. For the low tech among us, you can grab an MP3 audio tour, or you can pay a little extra and get a PDA tour.
The little handheld device comes with headphones to listen to the dialog, and a completely interactive touch screen to see close ups of objects or get audio dialogue about them. I'm not sure if it is the case in other languages, but the audio for English was done as a discussion between a stand-in for yourself ("Visitor"), and the "Curator" supposedly giving you the tour. The Visitor's questions run from the mundane softball set-ups to the mildly insightful. What adds an extra layer of bizarre to the experience is that all the voices are generated by text-to-speech programs, making the whole process seem like two chatbots having a quasi-Socratic dialogue in your presence.
All of the exhibit halls are similarly as huge as the building itself. They cover the beginnings of history in Korea, as well as cultural development is various fields of artistic development. The history section was a little odd in that more time was spent on the early history, and each successive time period was given less and less time, and then history just stops before the second Japanese occupation of Korea prior to World War II. That's it. Final gallery ends; no more history to be found. I'm not sure if this was intentional (as those periods of Korea's history are covered in other museums more thoroughly), is part of a work in progress, or was a deliberate decision to bury their heads in the sand over a controversial issue. I still don't know.
After passing most of the morning wandering the hallways of the museum, I decided to grab some lunch before heading back to the hotel to get my stuff for the game that night. The museum had a humongous food court that operated slightly differently from any I'd seen before. There is one main counter that has the menus for all the restaurants on screens behind them. You place your order there, and then they give you a pager for the restaurant that is doing your order. You sit around and wait for the pager to go off, and then you go to get your food.
The process went smoothly, and I crossed my fingers as I tucked into my pork rice bowl, my first real meal since arriving in Korea. I was able to finish my meal with no great consequences. I headed outside to see some of the exterior museum exhibits, and then get back on the subway to get my game bag for the game.
Taking the short walk to the game and back was without incident, and I went straight to bed upon returning to the hotel after the game, trying to get myself set on the new time schedule.
The Stadium & Fans:
Jamsil Stadium turned out to be one of the larger stadiums in Korea, about average-sized for a Japanese ballpark. It was the home venue for both the LG Twins and the Doosan Bears, so I was scheduled to be back here in the second week of my trip.
The stadium had its entire outside circumference filled with ticket windows, team stores (the LG Twins and Doosan Bears both had separate stores), and concession stands (including the likes of KFC and Dominoes), and a large parking lot was located in the back of the stadium. All of the signs in the stadium were changed to reflect the LG Twins, except the for the Bears team store and a set of doors under and overhand towards the back of the stadium, adorned with Bears branding.
The interior walkways went all around the stadium, but the individual seating areas were regulated by ushers. There was a lower deck and an upper deck around most of the stadium, with the exception of the bleachers, which tapered off into a single row. The bleachers were cordoned off by a separate entrance, as was the seating area behind home plate, although you could walk around the rest of the stadium through the upper deck.
The walkways had the expected concessions and merch shops, though because you are allowed to bring in your own food to Korean stadiums, the food concessions weren't as ubiquitous as you'd likely imagine. Jamsil Stadium also had "beer guys," but I have to say, I still prefer the Japanese beer girls. There were Twins banners everywhere, which indeed would be swapped out when the Bears were at home.
The Twins cheering section was on the first base side. The stage wasn't on the dugout itself, but slightly further down the first-base line. There was a formal MC and the cheerleaders, and the mascots (two sets of boy and girl twins) did make an appearance during the festivities, though it was mostly the MC and the cheerleaders, and it was the cheerleaders doing the between-inning shows, though there was a junior dance crew out between some innings. There was a special seventh-inning event that ended with a streamer cannon being fired over the stage area.
The visiting team had their MC (in a full white tux, no less) and their cheerleaders providing the show for the visiting fans. Even though the Lotte Giants were from as far away as you can get in Korea, the Giants fans were out in force, and filled up the entire left side of the stadium, making their presence well-known throughout the game. The home fans were in attendance as well, filling up the right side for this Friday-night game. Both were very loud with their inflatable thunder sticks through the course of the game, but the away fans, just by virtue of how far they had to travel, get the nod for being a little more loud than even the home fans. Either way, both sides were audible and enthusiastic for the entire run of the game.
At the Game with Oogie:
So for my first baseball trip, I was at a hotel literally a few blocks away from the stadium, so I didn't figure transportation was going to be a problem. About two-and-a-half hours before the game, I casually walk the ten minutes to the stadium... and find a line at the ticket booth wrapped halfway around the stadium.
I was fairly stunned that the line was so long and that they'd have literally only one ticket window open, and I started to wonder what I was going to do to get a ticket in time for the game, let alone for me to take all my crazy pictures.
At this point, the guy in line behind me interjects, in English, if I'm trying to go to the game. It turns out that he had spent a year in school in San Diego and so had a better-than-average grasp of English. While we were waiting, we talked for a goodly amount about why I was here, and he was appreciative of my goals. He gave me a great deal of pointers of getting tickets and getting to stadiums and getting out of stadiums. It was frankly exactly what I needed to start the trip off on the right foot, so I took that as some manner of sign.
Another sign came soon after when someone came out and started yelling in Korean which he let me know (on the move) that it translated to the fact that they had just opened up another ticket window. Now on a much shorter line, we got our tickets relatively quickly. He was from Busan and so was going to be on the third base side, but he ordered a first-base side ticket for me. Our business concluded, a thanked him profusely and wished him luck in the game.
After all my usual walking around taking pictures rigmarole, I went inside and found out that he had gotten me a seat on the first base side relatively close to the dugout stage with a great view of everything, so that worked out. We were wall to wall people down there, none of whom gave me much notice, but one or two were staring at me keeping score, though no one asked about it on that day.
The Game:
I wasn't quite sure what to expect from Korean baseball outside of some variation of the Japanese game. I wouldn't be surprised, and I would get an extra dose just to be sure.
The visiting Giants went down in order in the top of the first, while the Twins lead off with a single in the bottom of the inning. Here is where the divergence with Japanese ball began, as he was not immediately bunted over as a matter of course. A ground-out left a man on first, until the next batter singled him over to second. A walk loaded up the based with one out, and a dinky single brought home the first run, but the big inning was squandered with a fly to second and strike out looking, leaving it 1-0 Twins.
The Giants got a single in the top of the second and nothing else, but the Twins turned a single, sac bunt (there she is) and single into another run to make it 2-0 Twins. Again in the third, the Giants got a single and nothing else, while the Twins turned two singles and a stolen base to make it 3-0 Twins.
To shake things up, the Giants got
two singles in the top of the fourth without bringing anyone home, whereas the Twins finally failed to score on a solitary walk. The Giants went back to their original ways, getting a single in the top of the fifth, while the Twins surpassed them with two singles in the bottom of the inning with nothing to show for it.
The Giants finally broke through in the sixth. A leadoff walk was followed by a strikeout, two singles to bring one run home, and a routine ground-out to short that turned into a run on an E6. A new pitcher ended the rally at 3-2 Twins. The Twins got a single hit in their half of the inning, leaving the score at that tally.
The seventh saw the Giants back to form, getting a single hit in their half, while the Twins decided to get the run back. Back-to-back walks started off the inning and prompted another pitching change, and a two-out single brought the lead runner home, re-establishing the lead at 4-2 Twins.
The Giants came back in the eighth, overcoming a double-play to put a run across on a two-out double and single. The Twins answered with a leadoff single, sac bunt, and two more singles to leave them with a 5-3 lead going into the ninth.
The Twins closer came in and promptly got two quick pop outs to start the top of the ninth. A clean single broke up the inning, and it all came crashing down when the next batter drove a bullet straight into the left field seats, tying it up at 5-5 before the bleeding was stopped. The Twins went weakly in order, and my first game in Korea was going to extra innings.
Perhaps tired, both sides went in order though the top of the eleventh. The Twins had something going in the bottom of the inning, where a one-out single got moved to second on a fielder's choice, then followed by an intentional walk and a pedestrian walk to load the bases before a fly to left ended the inning.
The twelfth began with a double for the Giants. A ground out that moved the runner over to third was followed by a single to bring home the runner. A pop out to the catcher and a failed steal attempt ended the half. The Twins got a two-out single, but a fly out to right finally ended the game, sending the visiting Giants fans home happy with a 6-5 win in 12.
The Scorecard:
Giants vs. Twins, 06/22/12. Giants win, 6-5.
As Korean teams don't have scorebooks, I brought along the Baseball Writers' Association of America Official Scorebook to keep the time. One benefit that Hangul (the Korean written language) has over Japanese is that there is only one alphabet that is used for everything. While my longer exposure with Japanese gives me a greater fluency in it, it is still insanely difficult for me to read anything in it, because has four alphabets and is peppered with kanji, which are essentially Chinese characters you have to memorize to be able to read anything. That being the case, I am actually able to read Korean much better than I am Japanese. This made reading the names off the scoreboard much easier, and by about the third game in I was even able to get my scorecard filled out before the start of the game.
That wasn't the case here, as I struggled through reading, translating, and transcribing all the player and umpire names, no doubt rather badly. Korean names are nearly all three one-syllable names, so their scoreboards are accommodated for it. When there is a non-Korean in the lineup, it make trying to translate the transliteration even harder. I muddled through fairly well, I think, given the circumstances.
With a weird-assed, extra-innings game, there was bound to be some oddities, scoring-wise. The first was both teams managed to run out of position players before the end of the game and had to have the pitchers hitting for themselves because they needed to swap out position players with their DHs after all the pinch hitting. The Giants did this for the seventh inning, and the Twins did in by the twelfth.
Another weird one was the Twins called in a pinch hitter in the eleventh after the batter got a strike on him. As soon as he went 0-1, the manager went up and pulled him out for a pinch hitter, who only managed a weak ground-out to the pitcher. The thing was, this oddness was only the slightest of hints of what was to come for the rest of the trip.
The Accommodations:
I was at the PLEX Hotel again. I spent maybe an hour there awake all day.
The staff was super helpful when I was trying to make my call to my family to let them know I had gotten in okay. Between the language problems and me being jetlagged within an inch of my life, they were extremely patient and useful in the process.
2012 Korea
