Baseball in Korea
written by wil6ka
on August 21st, 2008
(0 votes)
There would be few sports you would name particularly Asian, maybe chess but hey this is not a sport. Obviously the creation of the most famous sports is historically a thing for Europeans and Americans. But the funny thing is, many Asian sportsmen are nowadays some of the worlds finest. Just think of Rugby and Cricket, which was brought to India and Australia while they were colonies. Another good example is baseball in Japan and especially to South Korea. In Korea it was established in 1905 and gained more and more momentum with the American troops during the Korean War in the 40ies.
And in 1982 the Korea Baseball Organization introduced the first professional sports league to Korea. Like many things in Korea every team belongs to a company like the big shots Samsung or LG.
One can truly say that baseball is the biggest sport in the last named country and Seoul is full of great stadiums. There plenty of them, more than for instance Football-Stadiums, and the ones that are not used no more become shopping markets or parks.
Kids are organized in youth-teams and many Korean Pros make it to the American league. But for me, as tourist, it is actually more striking how baseball is consumed by the average spectator. On Sunday midday I bought a ticket at the Dongdaeum Stadium. I went up and was accompanied by many old fellows just gazing on the field. And then one match after another took place. There was no obvious event taking place, no tension between the players or shouting on or off the green. So I rather had the feeling of a Buddhist get together and a grand meditation, which was only submitted regularly by flying baseballs.
If you want to see some of the professional games you better check the official web page of the Korean Baseball Organization, where you can find links to the teams and the venues.
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