John covered the KBO for an English-language newspaper in the s, around the time that Yang emerged as a star. Instead, Yang would flip the bat, then raise his hands "straight up in the air, almost like an NFL referee making a touchdown sign. He knew he was good," St. John says. Yang smirks when I ask about his critics. By the late s, he says, at least 10 hitters did the same.
But it never crossed my mind. During the s, Korean baseball slowly evolved, pivoting away from its Japanese roots. Former players say they grew more comfortable expressing themselves on the field, and the game's focus shifted from contact to power.
International success followed. After placing third in the Olympics and advancing to the semis of the World Baseball Classic, the Korean national team finally won gold in , beating Cuba at the Beijing Games.
Ever since that victory, the KBO's popularity has soared. This year leaguewide attendance is slated to top 8. By comparison, MLB's attendance, which hit I ask Lee, who surpassed Yang's home run record and also played for the national team, why that Olympic triumph meant so much to the country. But the meeting leaves me with new questions. If the origin of the gesture is intertwined with the proud history of the game, why are players so reluctant to open up about it?
Several people advise me to talk to a catcher named Hong Sung-heon, a veteran power hitter who is famously outspoken and beloved by fans. Hong is on the Doosan Bears, who play in Jamsil Stadium. On my way in, I spot a Doosan fan smoking near the entrance. After I promise not to reveal his name he skipped work to attend the game , he tells me to look up a clip from an international game last year between Japan and Korea.
One of the players, Oh Jae-won, performed an epic flip. I ask him if the celebration came after a monster home run. Hong meets me in the bowels of the stadium. He's wearing a muscle tee that says "Big Bopper," and his hair is dyed a copper color that's popular with Korean teenagers. When we sit down, one of the foreign players walks by and Hong bellows: "Whassup? Unlike some of his peers, the catcher -- a prolific flipper -- doesn't mind discussing the gesture. The act itself is not a bad thing.
I ask him if the celebration made him angry and he chuckles. He was showing his energy so the fans would feel it. Hong has a couple of explanations for why the bat flip came to be accepted here. First, the person who pioneered the move was Yang Jun-hyuk -- a living legend whose accomplishments legitimized his quirks.
Second, Korean players are less likely to hurt one another on the field. While the KBO has its own set of unwritten rules, most of which reflect the values of Korean society if a pitcher accidentally buzzes an older hitter, he must take off his hat and bow , they aren't enforced with violent retribution. Takeout slides, recently banned in MLB, never existed here.
Bench-clearing brawls are rare. Jee-ho Yoo, a sports writer with Yonhap News, says there are only a few dozen competitive high school baseball teams in Seoul, so "pretty much everyone knows everyone" in the KBO. Yoo remembers an incident a few years ago when a foreign player on the Lotte Giants tore down the third-base line and slammed into the catcher. Fans were appalled. Several players told me that before KBO teams began signing Americans in the late s, they had no idea that flinging one's bat after a hit was a no-no overseas.
They didn't even have a name for it. I didn't understand it. At first this seems curious, given all of the memes and fawning headlines that have cropped up in the U.
But when I email Dan Kurtz and ask him when his videos first went viral, he points me to two clips from One occurred when Choi Jun-seok, the enormous slugger, flipped his bat after a monster hit, then watched it go foul. The other happened when his teammate, Jeon Jun-woo, performed a flip on a ball caught at the warning track. I search for mentions of them online:.
These stories spread in the States, then traveled back to the KBO, where some players began to wonder if they were, in fact, committing a grave offense -- or even worse, if they were being mocked. Deep inside the museum, in an uncanny valley of Korean sports heroes, there's a vaguely unsettling facsimile of the legendary pitcher in a Dodgers uniform, grimacing and unfurling his arm.
When the real Park -- who goes by Park Chan-ho in Korea, where surnames are listed first -- emerges from his event, he's wearing a Porsche polo shirt and smells like expensive soap.
The next day, he's leaving to tape a reality show called Real Men, the premise of which involves attending boot camp with the Korean army. Park, 43, started playing baseball at the same time as Yang, but instead of joining the KBO, he quit college and signed with the Dodgers.
The pitcher, who was the first Korean ever to play for a major league team, says his transition was difficult at first. His teammates were befuddled when he bowed to the umpire; he was scolded, he says, when he asked a fellow Dodger to soap his back in the showers, a common practice in Korea.
He arrived at the clubhouse hours before everyone else, as he was accustomed to more strenuous practices. But by the time Park returned in to play one final year in the KBO, he had fully assimilated to American baseball, and certain elements of the Korean game, like the bat flips, took him by surprise. Pitcher needs to respect the batter. Winner respects the loser. Loser respects the winner.
After spending 17 years pitching in the States, Park was put off by Korean baseball's celebratory culture. We're not focusing. We're not here for the show.
We're here to win. Other Korean players who have spent time in the U. Seo Jae-weong, a commentator who pitched for six years in the majors, tells me he was slightly perplexed by them at first. In recent years, a new wave of Korean stars has taken a different path to the States, spending a few years in the KBO before switching leagues.
Yoo, the sports writer, says the rise in power in the KBO and Kang's strong rookie season paved the way for other position players. Now, Yoo says, more players aspire to go to MLB, but when they make the transoceanic journey, they leave some of their old ways behind. Byung-ho Park, who was signed by the Twins last year, was famed for his high-flying flips, many of which were featured on Kurtz's site.
But he forced himself to kick the habit when he arrived in the U. So did Kang. The Lotte Giants' Hwang Jae-gyun, a hard-hitting third baseman who hopes to lure the attention of American scouts, says he quit flipping last year.
Some Korean players believe that Park, a first baseman and designated hitter who was demoted to the minors in July, might actually be struggling because of his altered approach. He impersonates a player taking a mighty stroke and then gingerly setting down his bat, almost like he's putting an infant to bed. While bat flips haven't abated yet, most of the Korean players I meet agree that the act has become stigmatized in recent years.
This past spring, a local cable network even staged a debate on the issue. One former player defended the custom on camera, but another KBO veteran took an anti-flip stance, arguing that hitters violate "proper etiquette" when they fling their bats.
Pele's locker is still locked and kept for him in the dressing room at Vila Belmiro Stadium. Luiz Maximiano. Halfway through the first inning, I find out why. A giant tube surfaces from the cheerleaders' platform, rising to the sky like a pipe in Mario Brothers. Once it's about 20 feet tall, the Wiz's cheermaster pops out, lifts a giant hose and starts spraying us with water. Six cannons below him shoot powerful jet streams, and a row of sprinklers goes off in the upper deck.
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During the trial he denied most of the charges. Your parents were also fond of me. Then he recollected what happened after the disclosure of Burning Sun and the chat room and pointed out he had undergone a significant amount of pressure during the police investigation.
Seungri prostitution lawsuit takes a dramatic turn as his friend Mr Park appears in court to give his testimony. Credits: Xportnews, Soompi, Instagram.
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