Pick Up Game

So, yeah, after a touch of downerism, I decided to pick myself up by the scruff of my…face and hied myself to an evening outing where I’d be around people having fun. I suppose it doesn’t matter if we can hold a conversation or not, we can enjoy the event together regardless. So, similarly to when I was in Taiwan, I went to a baseball game.

Similarly to the game I went to in Taipei, the ticket was inexpensive. In this case even less than there. The local team, the Lotte Giants, are currently at the bottom of the table and were hosting KIA, who were at the top. I thought, why not.

It was about an hour’s trip on subway and foot to get to the stadium, where I queued up for the Self-Ticketing kiosks with a hundred of my closest friends. An hour before game time, the barricades rose, and it was time to get a ticket.

Different from Taipei, it was a machine and not a person. Also different from Taipei, the payment was not cash. Funny that Taipei didn’t take a card, and here in Busan, it was card or nada. Of course, the kiosk was solely in Korean. I closely watched the people in front of me to get an idea of what to touch to get to the screens where I could select a seat. When it was my turn, I tapped blindly at the touchscreen and I thought I had a seat.

Turns out, I had about 5 of them. Thankfully, the kid behind me in line stepped up and gave me an assist. The one seat that remained, and that I purchased was perfect: top of the stands along the homefield side of first base. Cost: 10,400KW. Sounds like a lot. It’s not. That converted to $7.65. Not bad for a seat at a professional baseball game.

After locating my seat, I went back to the beer vendor I’d passed by when I’d gone in, and bought a lager. That ran me 5000 KW. Now I was set with a beer and a seat for an evening game.

I had a good time. A few high fives with my neighbors at appropriate times bypassed the language difficulties. And, the home team brought home the win, though I didn’t stay until the bitter end. I still had an hour’s trip back to my stay, and I’m a pumpkin.

Some things about Korean baseball:

1. You apparently can bring in your own food and drinks. I saw pizza, fried chicken, BBQ, beers and all kinds of tea and coffee, though most of that was probably available as well from the vendors inside the venue. Prices were pretty cheap, too.

2. There is no rummaging around in your bag by security when you come in.

3. People are trusting; I saw folks leave their bag on their seat and disappear for 15 or 20 minutes. Nobody touched anything.

4. It’s an audience participation event. When the home team was up, the stands were riotous with chants and noise. The crowd also had a custom chant for many players when they came to the plate, too.

5. There is an odd break at the end of the 5th inning. The lights were dimmed, the cheerleaders were up on the big board, and the players went out into the field and stretched and warmed up like it was the start of the game.

I had a good time, and it did alleviate the blues a bit, which was the intent, so good on it.

I’ve now been to professional sports in almost as many countries as I’ve visited Costcos. All I need to do is head back to Mexico and catch a game. Then the two tallies will match. In terms of states, I need to catch a pro game of some sort in Washington to make the same match.

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On a different note, I discovered that my current stay isn’t on particularly good terms with fire code safety. It’s more of a passing nod and a wink, I think. I’m on the 17th floor — a legitimate 17, since there is both a 4 and 13, and I like taking the stairs most of the time (at least down from here, I’ll go up to about 10). I still do it despite it now being more than just annoying to my knees. I’ve been taking them, and found it notable that there is a fair amount of “stuff” on the landings, blocking it on some to there only being about 15 inches or so to get by. That was on the main stairs next to the elevators. I thought to try the stairwell closest to my room the other day, and some of the landings were nearly completely blocked with furniture, necessitating me to side-slip and step over some items. The kicker though, was when I got to the bottom. The exit door was completely blocked from the outside.

I went up a flight, over and down, and took a look where the exit was. It was filled with bags of recycle and palletized other stuff. Like 15 feet deep. There was no way to push that door open even if I’d wanted to at the time. Note to self: take the stairs next to the elevator in case of emergency.

Be kind, and take care of yourselves. If you can, care for someone else, too.

Slang, out.

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