Seeing a KIA Tigers Baseball Game

KIA Tigers Baseball Stadium - Gwangju, South Korea

This past week on Sunday night, I got a text from one of the teachers at my school, informing me that the principal had given her baseball tickets to that upcoming Wednesday's KIA Tigers baseball game in Gwangju to pass on to me. She asked me if I would be available to use them and told me I could use the second ticket for whomever I wished to attend the game with. 

It was a huge, but welcome surprise which I gladly accepted. I picked the tickets up the following day at school, graciously thanking my principal in the process. 

I went to the game with a friend of mine that lives in Gwangju. We met up, bought lots of snacks like chicken, mandu, and kimbap, and went to the stadium. 

One thing that I love about Korea is that you are allowed to bring your own food and drinks to sporting games, you don't have to always buy overpriced stadium food. You can even bring your own beer, as long as you poor it into approved cups at the entrance of the stadium. You don't even have to sneak the food in! Haha

Compared to the Twins game I went to in Seoul, the seats were certainly better this time, seated still high up in the back, but situated near third base and not the outfield. I could see the entire game much clearer than I had previously. Plus, the weather was beautiful and warm for a day in March. It's one time of year where I appreciate the climate difference between Korea and Michigan, it is only March, but the weather feels like late June/early July to me. Its like perfect summer weather right now and I plan on enjoying it before it turns devastatingly hot. 

The game started at 6:30 and lasted about three hours. It was fun, entertaining, had good saves, plays, runs, and all that, but it was slightly disappointing that the Tigers lost to the Samsung Lions by a very large margin (6-0). Especially since they are Korea's highest ranking team, with 11 national championships, including last year in 2017; I was expecting a lot more from them. That's sports though I guess, never know what team is going to have a good day that day. 

I also have to hand it to Korean people, they sure can fan chant, and unified as a force. Their coordinated cheers honestly do impress me.

Another thing about the game that I loved was the snacks. Even though we had stuffed ourselves with food, we still ended up with snacks to top it off. My friend left to get concessions and returned with fried buttery squid...yes SQUID. Only in Asia would you be able to get fried squid in a baseball stadium while you watched the game. The thing is though, it is delicious. It has like this irresistible chewy texture and doesn't taste fishy at all, just buttery and chewy. Just thinking about it makes me want to eat more. My only regret was that despite being super full, I felt like the serving wasn't enough haha. I could've eaten so much of it. My friend also said it pairs very well with beer while you are watching the game. 

Here are some videos of  the game:

In the first two videos you can hear the clearly devoted KIA Tigers fan that was sitting in front of us with whom I'm assuming is her boyfriend. Between the two of them, it was clear who the true fan was lol. It amused me to watch the two of them at the game. Alas, her cheering spirit messed up my videos more than one time, which is clearly seen by her arm shooting in and out of my shots haha. 

This was the only video I took where I managed to get a Tigers player actually hitting the ball, a home run looked promising, but unfortunately it just wasn't quite far enough. 

The game coming to a close

Outside the stadium as we were leaving

I am glad that I was able to see a second professional game during my time in Korea, especially since this was my home team so to speak. Now my students will finally be satisfied by the fact that I have at least seen their team, although I didn't get a Tigers jersey like I did for the Twins. It is just too expensive haha. 

For information on the Korean baseball schedule and teams, click here.