A night at the Ball Park

 
 

Go Hustle Doo!!

My softheart for ne'rdowell baseball teams most likely springs from my hometown pride. It's no secret that recently the KC Royals have put the "base" in Baseball, but that doesn't keep me from stubbornly (if not saddistically) declaring myself a Royals Fan. Now that may not mean much in the States, but in Seoul...well, it means even less. So now here in Korea I pledge my fanaticism to the mighty Doosan Bears!! And I must say that going to a baseball game in Korea isn't too far afield from going out to "the K" on a summer night back home. Like most Asian experiences it's "Same, same...but different".

After work my buddies Sean, Sprite, and myself headed straight to the stadium a few short stops away on the metro. As we emerged from the subway station we met the expected bazaar of "free lance" concession vendors. But instead of the typical popcorn, peanuts, pizza and beer that one may expect, we were offered kimbab, fish bologna, roasted squid...and beer. Mmmmm, nothing says a night at the park like the smell of charcoal and tentacles wafting under the stadium lights.

Regardless of the seafood menagerie outside, we felt much more at home once we got past the gates. We joined the other nose-bleeders high and back behind the first baseline and settled down in the hard plastic seats, a beer in each hand, and a big bucket of KFC (for the boys...I enjoyed my vegetarian kimbab). The game was as entertaining as baseball can be on a mid-season Tuesday night. There were some old familiar mid-inning diversions: the Kiss Cam, Crowd sing-alongs, and what I think may have been a wedding proposal...but I don't speak Korean.

Actually, the language barrier ended up being a great source of entertainment. When trying to cheer along with the crowd we ended up taking liberties with homonymic English words like "Chick-en.Good-bye" or "Fiiiight-ing.Gold.Duck". But then we found it was much more entertaining to shout our own ludicrous English phrases with the assumed comfort that nobody knew what we were saying anyway. That night Doosan Bears were encouraged by cheers of "Pig Intestines!!!", "Cabbage-Head Zit!", and a few others I think it best to censor. It must have worked, Doosan won 6 to 2 and we filed out with the rest of the crowd with smiles on our faces, feeling the commraderie and pride of a hometown win. Even if it wasn't KC.