So the Giants won the World Series.

Everyone knows this by now. However, what you guys might not know is that the SK Wyverns of Incheon, my favorite Korean baseball team won Korean championship this year.

I’m not a huge fan of the Giants or anything, but I don’t hate them. I actually like Tim Lincecum, so I’m glad he won it. He just seems like a guy I could be friends with. I bet that my mom is going to hear about it on the Filipino Channel since they’ve been hyping up the fact that Lincecum is part Filipino.

Teaching adults is serious business.

Since there was no school yesterday, I didn't have my weekly tutoring session with the P.E. teacher like.  He wanted to use a book to study, so I told him we'd go tomorrow after school to go buy one.  I said he could just choose which one he wants to use and it'd be fine, but since he's unsure what level his English is at, he doesn't know which one to buy.  It's probably for the best that we're going to use a book, since I really don't know what to teach him about or what he's interested in.  The first time we met he didn't know what he wanted to learn, so he just asked me a bunch of questions about baseball.  You won't believe how ridiculously hard it is to explain the DH rule to someone with limited English.  My explanation was probably too much in detail, since it's not like he really needed to know that a DH is different in the AL and the NL and how the rule is enforced in interleague play, but at least he got his question answered.

Incheon's magical streak is over.

Incheon's magical streak is over.

I'm sure not many people care, but the SK Wyverns finally lost a game, ending their 16-game winning streak.

Baseball in Korea

I went to a baseball game yesterday at Munhak Stadium.  It was the Incheon's SK Wyverns vs the Lotte Giants from Busan.  Incheon won the game 14-4 and just demolished every pitcher on the mound.  Seriously, a grand slam in the 8th was just overkill.  Anyway, there's a lot of differences between baseball games in Korea and America and here are a few of them.

• You can bring food and drinks into the stadium.  Even though the mark-up on snacks and beverages inside the stadium isn't that high, it's still cool that you can bring in as much food and beer as you want.  There were a lot of people yesterday that brought in pizzas or entire coolers.
• There are cheerleaders.
• The crowd's a lot more involved.  The cheerleaders lead chants and songs that everyone knows.  There's even assorted clap patters and dances that accompany them.  The highlight of last night was that the crowd started doing the wave.  They did a few normal waves and then they did one in slow motion.  That was probably the greatest thing I've ever seen a crowd do.
• The pitchers are worse.  None of them are throwing in the 90's or even high 80's.  It probably makes the game more exciting though, since the players are hitting the ball more often.  There were three guys on the Incheon line-up that were batting over .400 and that's just ridiculous, even if we are currently leading the league.
• There are a foreigners who play in Korea, but there's a limit on how many the team could have.  From what I've seen, most foreigners are pitchers.
• There's no 7th inning stretch in Korea.
• A lot of fans wear jerseys or hats, but some die-hard ones come in full gear.  They're dressed in baseball pants with the high socks and everything.  It's sort of cute when kids do it, but seeing grown men in the full gear is a little funny.
• In between innings, there's a 2-minute time limit to help speed up the game, which I haven't really made an opinion on yet.

To be honest, I think that the games in Korea are a lot more enjoyable than games in America.  Sure, I'm not as invested into the games since I don't really know the players or the teams, but it's still a really fun time.

Korea's changing the way the game is played.

This article in the Chosun Ilbo reports that Korea, in an effort to be more energy efficient, is changing the way baseball is played.  The Korean Baseball Organization (KBO) will be installing solar energy panels and energy efficient lights in major stadiums.  However, the major change is in how they are trying to shorten the games by enforcing a time limit on pitchers to throw the ball.  Once the batter is in the box, pitchers will receive a warning after 12 seconds.  After every 12 seconds after the first warning will be counted as a ball.  I'm wholeheartedly behind saving energy and I can see how this does make sense, but there are immediate problems that I see.  First, teams will have to expand their bullpen.  Pitchers are not only having less time between their pitches, but also less time between innings.  Another issue is how the 12 seconds are going to be enforced, like what if the pitcher is in a wind-up at 11 seconds, but doesn't release the ball until after 12?  There's also going to be some weird circumstances with pitchers trying to hold off runners as well.  In the end I guess, I'm not really opposed to the idea.  I just know that there are going to be some issues and I sort of want to see how this plays out.