For those of you who don’t know, baseball is one of the most popular sports in South Korea. The Korean Baseball Organization, KBO, is Korea’s professional baseball league. The KBO only has ten teams, but when you think about how small Korea is, ten teams is quite a lot for the size of the country.
Luckily, one of those teams is located in Gwangju! When researching Gwangju before my arrival, I was very excited to see they had a baseball team because I am a huge baseball fan. The KIA Tigers is Gwangju’s team and although they were only established in 2001, they have the most championship wins in the league–11! However, this season they hit a bit of a slump as they are 9th in the league.
Last week, I had the chance to go watch the Tigers play. I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to this season with all the COVID restrictions, but the stadium was open to fans as long as you weren’t in groups larger than four people. We were able to purchase our tickets ahead of time and pick them up at the stadium. I was pleasantly surprised at how cheap the tickets were; it was only about $13 for tickets on the first level about 20 rows back from the first base line. I think you'd have to get pretty lucky to find those seats for that price at a MLB game.
On the day of the game I was really excited! I was eager to watch a baseball game and very curious to see if there were any differences in Korean baseball and American baseball. I went to the game with a few friends, one from South Africa and two from England, who’d never seen a baseball game before so it was fun to explain to them how the game worked.
There wasn’t a big crowd at the game which didn’t surprise me much as the Tigers hadn’t been having a great season and the ongoing pandemic probably also kept some people at bay. Our section was pretty empty and we soon realized we should’ve sat on the third base side as that’s where all the Tigers’ fans were. We were able to switch over to the fun side later in the game which made the experience 10x better.
The fans were probably the best part of the game. Although there weren’t many of them, each time the Tigers were batting, everyone stood up and cheered nonstop until their at-bat was over. There was a guy whose job it was to lead cheers throughout the inning along with dancers who led dances to go along with the cheers. Everyone really got into it, us included, and it was so much fun! I can only imagine what it would’ve been like had the stadium been full of people. I was also really impressed at how passionate the fans were even when the Tigers were losing by 10. They seriously never stopped cheering and although it wasn’t a great game, everyone was having a great time.
Another aspect of the game I was looking forward to was the food. I wasn’t sure what to expect Korean concession stands to offer, but it was another good surprise. There weren’t a lot of places serving food in order to limit the spread of possible COVID exposure, but the places that were open had lots of great, cheap options. The food was much cheaper than it would have been at any MLB stadium; I ended up getting cream cheese balls for only like $4. My friends got a corn dog for $3; what a steal! To further protect against the spread of COVID, you could only eat in certain areas of the stadium. These were basically long high top tables with dividers on them so each person could take off their mask and eat without worrying about being around other people. It was a bit of a weird experience to eat away from the seats, standing up, but I understood the reason since they were trying to be cautious with COVID.
One other thing I noticed that was unique about Korean baseball, or at least at the KIA Tigers’ stadium, was the addition of the Safe staff. These staff members were almost like ushers, but were watching the game the entire time. Any time there was a foul ball, they would blow whistles to alert the fans and then go check on the fans after the ball had been recovered. I thought it was a really good idea, because many times people take their eyes off the field and don’t see a ball coming at them. MLB should consider the addition of a job like this as well in their stadiums.
All in all it was a great night of baseball! We had an absolute blast at the game. I’m looking forward to attending more games in the spring and to learning all of the cheers so I can become a true Tigers fan!
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