Baseball: As Korean as Kimchi

From the fond memoirs of father-son trips to Wrigley Park, to the black and white footage of Babe Ruth waddling 'round the bases, it's always been a given: baseball is the American sport.

But the truth is, the baseball cards are getting dusty in the attic and attendance in stadiums around the country are free-falling. Not so in Korea. The most popular sport is celebrated in a very American way, with beer, popcorn and warring fan cheers.

I can't tell you the first thing about baseball, but when my friend Raeann invited me to a game pitting the LG Twins against the SK Wynverns, there was no refusing.

When I left my apartment, it was 2:30 on a beautiful Saturday afternoon. I was happy, even stuffed like a sardine on the subway, in a moshpit-like tangle of people. Some say that if you look at the contents of a woman's purse you can tell a lot about her life, but I'd say the same is true of Seoul's subway system. But I wasn't thinking about the beauty of diversity when I got off at the wrong station, nor was I thinking about how great Seoul's public transportation is while I waited for the next express train -- for 20 minutes. It wasn't like I was going off the beaten path in some rural adventure. I just sucked at decision making that day. I would have sprinted up the stairs to meet Raeann and her Korean friend, Jeong, if the boiling ocean of people had let me. But there we finally were, 2 hours later, beside the 2002 Olympic Sports Complex, about to see two amazing teams go head to head. And I was happy. Within minutes of settling into our seats by first base, I started to inspect the people around us. The atmosphere was a throwback to what I imagine American baseball games were like in its heyday. The stadium was packed with young families and couples, everyone intent on the game. Cute moms in baseball hats carried jersied babies and a father held his son's hand as they screamed the cheers in unison. The cheers were a big reason why I couldn't stop thinking about the U.S. In the tradition of the Asian stance on copyright, songs like "It's a Small World" Eminem's "Without Me" and Kelly Clarkson's "My Life Would Suck Without You" were hijacked with team slogans. Yeah. Let me tell you, I had way more fun slaughtering Korean lyrics as I stood shoulder to shoulder with LG Twins fans than at any American sports game I've been to. So whether American baseball is really dying, I don't know, but be assured that the game lives on in Korea.

The details of the contest that night are a blur, but I came away knowing we lost, the caramel popcorn was mind-blowing and we were way better at cheering than the other team.

Cutesy in Review: Couple Tees

Seoul hasn't been short on "cutesy" fashion since cell phone charms and Hello Kitty. The couple tee trend, however, pushes style to a sickening level.
The question everyone has when they see sweethearts in couple tees, is ...really? Of course. How else would attractive young couples declare their togetherness? As the name suggests, affectionate lovers sport shirts with just one slight difference: one has a boy teddy bear, the other a girl teddy. Just to keep things straight.

I met this cute couple in their matching tee get-up on a leisurely tour of Gyeongbukgung Palace downtown. They had clearly answered the, "Do I like you that much?" question and assumed that everything else would fall into place. I was so delighted to see them that I forgot to take a picture of the teddy bear. Not every couple tee has teddies -- some have Mickey and Minnie mouse, some are more sports jersey-like, but the bears get my vote for their brand of cutesy cheese, hands down.

Apgujeong Bowling

"If anyone told me I'd break one hundred, I'd have told them they're crazy," I said, standing on the slippery bowling lane in my retro blue and red shoes.

Hiddens in the maze of Apgujeong's streets, in the basement of a hotel, is a small, ill-functioning bowling alley where about 100 people from New Harvest Ministries met for a night of fun and backslapping. Ages ranged from 18 to 40-somethings, but the skill level was the same -- terrible. I've noticed that Koreans view leisurely fitness time as a debit against their studying hours, so I shouldn't have been surprised that the high score of the night was about 160.

It's bowling with the people in my Bible study that makes it fun -- the crazy faces, ball wars, smack talk and one-upping each other with new tossing styles. With all that, I did, in fact, manage to break one hundred, but can I do it again? You're probably crazy.