Opening Day

I joined a group of my fellow expats--Andy, Eric and Nick (all of whom have been mentioned before)--for an afternoon at Jamshil Baseball Stadium as the Doosan Bears hosted the KIA Tigers from Gwang-ju in the season opener.

Despite being Doosan fans, we were only able to get tickets on the KIA side. And lemme tell ya, those folks are just as rabid in their fandom as Bears fans! If you examine the photo below, you can see the KIA cheerleaders on the platform over the third base line--there are only four of them, and their movements are simplified in comparison to a cheer squad in the US.



The Tigers roared off to a 1 - 0 lead in the top of the first, but Doosan evened it in the bottom half. The next two innings went three up-three down. The Bears had a big fifth inning, scoring five runs on three base-clearing doubles with two out before the Tigers slowly clawed their way back into the game with hard-earned runs in the sixth and seventh. These KIA fans take the game seriously!


As the last couple of innings passed, and Kia brought on a sidewinder, Doosan added an insurance run to make the final score 7 - 5.