More Charm of Korean Countryside Baseball

April 30th, 2009 Shinsano

On Tuesday April 28,2009, Hanwha kicked off it’s first of nine games at Cheongju Baseball Stadium (capacity of 12,000 — built in 1990) as part of the KBO’s program of using alternative sites to play a few games. I’ve written about this before in reference to the Lotte Giants, who usually play a two or three series at Masan Baseball Stadium, a 21,885 capacity stadium (no listing of when it was built).

This year Lotte will play just six games in Masan. I always think it’d be fun to take one of these in, but that would necessitate spending time in Masan, where most of the memories I have involve the “less-nice” side of my wife’s family, where we once huddled in a cousin’s bed because the woman of the house (my wife’s Aunt) was too cheap to ever use the heater. Even in the dead of winter.

I’ve never been to Cheonju, but I picture it as being something like the Masan of the north. I’m sure I’ll end up there eventually, a couple major high school teams hail from there. I’d link to the Cheongju Foreigner Website but actually the link is dead.

I found a forum created by Out of the Park Baseball (a game I really like) from 2006 supposedly listing every baseball stadium in world. I looked up a few of the more obscure ones from Korea on Naver. I can’t post the photos, since Naver blog protect most of its photos from people like me who might want to share Korean culture with the rest of the world, but here are links to Guri Baseball Stadium (6,570) and headquarters of the LG Twins, and Gyeongsan Baseball Stadium (7,000), where the Lotte minor league team plays.

HOPEFULLY THIS SEASON I WILL BE ABLE TO GO TO ONE OF THESE GAMES.