Without a doubt, baseball in South Korea is a glorious, noisy, fried-chicken fueled thing. And this year Daegu’s club, the Samsung Lions, have moved into a shiny new mega-stadium on the outskirts of town (as opposed to their older, charming, dingier spot downtown).
Samsung won 7-5 over the dreaded NCsoft Dinos, thanks to some timely base-running and some unforced errors by NCsoft.
As for the new stadium, it’s great. You’d be crazy to visit Korea and not witness the madness that is a KBO ball game. But I did shed a small tear for the older and smaller stadium downtown, where the local ajumma would come out to set up stalls literally surrounding the stadium selling fried chicken and cans of beer. Everything here is shinier and cleaner and more modern, but also basically more corporate. The only vendors are chain restaurants. Alas, I don’t know the Korean expression for “late capitalism.”
“Kissu Time!”
Beer drinking contest. The prize for the winner was, ahem, that case of beer between them.
Approaching the park which is about five minutes from Daegu’s World Cup Soccer Stadium. Pro-tip: a shuttle runs from the shopping mall at World Cup stadium to Lions Park. You can actually avoid a fair amount of traffic that way, and parking at the shopping mall is free.
And apologies for so many jumbo-tron shots. We got there late and couldn’t get third-base side tickets (for maximum cheerleader and MC viewage / insanity). It was the only minor drawback to yet another great evening of Korean baseball.
