Opening Day in South Korea

Why it's a good thing

Opening Day in South Korea

I first visited South Korea in October 2012.

I remember it well. My wife and I went around from one place to another with the two kids we had at the time. We skipped a lot of the tourist spots and focused mostly on things that were appropriate for our two toddlers.

I remember going back to our hotel one evening on the Seoul Metropolitan Subway, and noticing that everybody around me seemed to be watching their cellphones.

Just about everybody was watching baseball.

I saw older men and young boys watching. I saw women watching, both young and old.

I didn’t know it at the time, but they were watching a KBO playoff game.

The thing that I’ll never forget, however, is just how captivated people were by this. I’ve been in major U.S. cities during the playoffs. I was living in the Washington D.C. area during the Nationals’ 2019 World Series win. And yet I’ve never seen anything quite like that.

We might feel frustrated with the novelty of opening day in a foreign country. However, I sincerely think it’s a good thing for the sport in general. Demand for baseball — good baseball — is higher than you think in Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. Major League Baseball is wise to try to build up a larger following in those countries.

Here are a few of my other thoughts on the subject:

When this article goes live, I’ll be watching the Dodgers and the Padres.