V4! (Fourth Championship!)
Beefcakes, Saturday was game 5 of the Korea Series (i.e. the World Series, but they aren't that preposterous). Eight teams in the league, all sponsored by the chaebols (think LG, Daewoo, Hyundai, etc)....and who made it to the series? Samsung Lions, clearly. (and Hanhwa Eagles).
The Chairman's office gave us tickets (awesome), which by the way are first come, first sit - so you want pick your team's side and partake in the cheering festivities.
Here's a video of Hanhwa's fans.....see if you can pick up the "(some) (guy's) (name) HOME RUN!" cheer about 11 seconds in (you'll need sound, knuckleheads)....
Anyway, here's five things I learned about Korea's national pastime:
1. The count is reversed. Instead of a 3-2 count (3 balls, 2 strikes), it's 2-3 here. And the announcers say "two and three" not the Korean "DULL-HAAGO-SAAM". Goofy.
Here's a pic of Samsung's fans from the game Saturday - note the blown up Lions.
2. Two foreigners are allowed per team. The rest, obviously, are Korean. This makes cheering very convienient since all Koreans have three syllable names (Chan-Ho Park, Hee-Sop Choi, Kim Jong Il).
Samsung has two white dudes who are pitchers. Hanhwa has a black dude, named Davis - pronounced in Korean "DEH-EE-BEE-SA". The Samsung guys pull in US$300k per year - not too shabby.
I took this photo of the Samsung stand an hour before the game. Note the cheerleaders platform in the middle of the stands and sign for KFC which reads "OO-REE-JEE-NAWL CHEE-KEEN" - yes, "Koreanizing" English words is common here. What you can't see is that Samsung has it's own cheering speaker system, random fireworks, dried squid stands - and of course the half dozen beers yours truly put down. Ahhh, Cass - The Sound of Vitality!
(click on the pic for a blown up version - you can do that with any Blogger posted pic, by the way)
3. Normally after 12 innings the game is a tie. In the playoffs, it extends to 15 innings. And because they play small-ball style (bunting, tactical, rather than home runs), this happen more often than you think. Our game Saturday....a 15 inning 1-1 tie. Nuts. Samsung would have won the best of 7 series 4 games to 1 that day. (They did it the next day.)
Here's a video I shot from our stands. The song is the Pet Shop Boys "Go West" - a very common soccer cheer in Korea. Don't worry, later in the game, they busted out the Backstreet Boys "Backstreet's Back". Money.
4. "Double play" in Korean translates to “parallel killing”. Umm, yeah.
Here's an aerial shot of the stadium on the scoreboard (in the old Olympic grounds). It held about 30,000 folks, but is meant as a "neutral" site for the final three games of the series.
5. And the best of all....CHEERLEADERS! On a platform in the middle of the stands. Dallas Cowboys eat your heart out.
But seriously, they do add a lot to the game (the organized cheers are good times) other than rediculous eye candy. Generally you cheer after every out, when your team is batting, and between innings - in short, all the time! And no, there is no 7th inning stretch, but an end of 6th inning 15 minute break - who knew?
MLB has got a lot to learn, my friends.
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