So I woke up at 4 a.m. again, and decided to go grab a snack at the convenience store on the first floor. I got some makoli, (fermented rice wine – costs about $1.50 – hey! it’s payday and the first day of summer vacation!) some more fruit flavored popcorn (which cost the same as the wine!) and a sign marker so I can post-it note my apartment with Korean vocabulary.
On the way upstairs, I decided to check out the other two floors of businesses. The only reason I did this was because a weighted free-standing restaurant sign of Korean dishes had blown over in the wind, and I had never seen any advertising for a restaurant in my building before and thought there were only offices. So yeah, there are several law firms, the local office for the Ministry of Employment (called ” Job World”) and TWO restaurants! One is a Korean restaurant, and the other one is a catfish restaurant. Prices seen average (6,000 won) so I will have to check it out soon.
When I got upstairs I turned on the t.v., and it was on the Xports channel. What? Oh yeah, I had lingered on the sports channel the last time because there was a retrospective on Kim Yu-Na, Korea’s beautiful figure skater and current world champion.
ANYWAY, This baseball game is insane! There’s This one white guy (a pretty huge white guy) on the Busan Lotte Giants team, (and it looks like one on the other team as well) and as he was running the bases it looked like he went out of his way to plow down the Daejon City Hanwha Eagle’s catcher. At the next inning, the Eagle’s pitcher pegs the Giant’s batter seemingly on purpose and an argument ensues. They don’t walk the pitcher. (what? does Korean baseball have different rules?) Did they expell the pitcher instead? (I missed what happened, as I was reading an email…) The batter continues to swing and hits a solo homerun into the bleachers and the crowd goes wild. Soon, there is a pile-up for the ball, which BREAKS OUT INTO A FIST-FIGHT. It’s been nonstop excitement, this game. I wonder if it’s always like this?
Hello Korea ! 
No Baseball isn’t always like this. It sounds like the pitcher wanted to get revenge for the other player running into his catcher, so he plunked the next batter(which happened to be the pitcher). Maybe he got a warning. Even in Major League Baseball they don’t walk the pitcher. As a mater of the fact in the American league the pitcher doesn’t bat, they have replaced him with the designated hitter.In the National League, the pitcher still bats. In interleague games played on a National League field, the American League pitcher does bat. Hope this clarifies things!
I thought walking the batter when a pitcher hit them was MLB rules, no matter what his position is. Shows how little I watch baseball.
Also, I didn’t know pitchers batted like the National League here. So that makes sense, as I hadn’t realized the batter was the pitcher from the last inning. He took that ball really well! I wonder what it was clocked at.
And a pitcher hitting a solo home-run? Is this guy superman, or what?