One of the best things about making our own travel arrangements is the flexibility to find and jump on an opportunity for an adventure. On Sunday, Phillip and I were "toured out" after the Hwasseong fortress trek, so we decided to just ride the subway into Seoul, a trial run for Monday when we'd have our suitcases and be changing hotels from Suwon to our final stop, Seoul.
This is Gwangjang Market, famous for its food vendors, and where we had lunch with a few hundred of our friends. We had kim bap and tteokbokki, total price: 5000 won (less than $5). After walking around this market and another, we wanted an activity where we could sit. I'd looked up Korean baseball on the internet when I had research Shin Soo Choo, so I knew there was a game scheduled for Sunday.
A subway ride, and we arrived at Jamsil Stadium (which like Osan AFB, isn't in the town for which it's named, just like the Dallas Cowboys' stadium is in Arlington). The Doosan Bears playing the Hanwha Eagles. 8000 won for each ticket, outfield seats, but as you can tell from the picture, not bad at all. This class of ticket is general seating, not reserved, so we were 8 rows up from the fence.
Our seats were close to the big mass of Hanwha Eagle fans, an area with a platform for the cheerleaders and mascot. The enthusiasm of the fans was wonderful! They stood and sang, they yelled and cheered, and they waved and beat their orange sticks.
All the real fans had a set of these inflatable sticks, orange for the Eagles, white with blue letters for the Bears. When a couple thousand people whacked their sticks against each other, it did make a big noise. It was also, especially on the Eagles side, colorful as the fans held them aloft to smack them together.
The scoreboard shows the 12 innings that were to be played for the game. The seventh batter for Doosan was at the plate, with an 1-0 count, 2 outs already in the inning. We arrived in the top of the 2nd inning and Doosan was already ahead 3-0. I wish I'd seen the first inning, because Doosan got their runs on only 1 hit but 3 errors by Hanwha. Poor Hanwha, they did go thru several pitchers.
And speaking of pitchers, beer wasn't sold by the pitcher or glass. It was sold by the one liter bottle. 3500 won for a liter of beer (over 32 ounces) and two cups. That works out to about $1.60 US for a 16-ounce cup of beer. I can't think of any US major league ballparks where beer is that cheap... And it's just as good as Miller or Bud (but not as good as Shiner!)
The stadium has 22,000 seats and lighting and a structure just like any MLB stadium in the USA. The fan experience reminded me of when I was in Durham, NC and attended a Durham Bulls game, i.e., more fun and with an involved crowd. At one point, the lights on the Doosan Bears side of the stadium dimmed and the fans knew it was time to hold up their flashlights and sway to the music (FYI, Doosan was the home team in this game). Everyone had a flashlight because they used their cellphones. And everyone under 70 and over 10 in Korea has a smartphone - I do not think that is an exaggeration!
And here we are at the game... Jackets because this picture was after dark and a breeze was blowing across the outfield seats. We left at the top of the eighth inning. Doosan Bears were ahead 7-0. Even though the Eagles were trailing quite a bit, the Eagles fans still smacked their air bats and yelled just as loud in the 8th inning as they did in the 2nd when we arrived. On our way out of the stadium, we stopped and bought ourselves Doosan Bears jerseys. We loved our spur of the moment adventure of the Korean baseball game...
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