[Current & Culture] May Your Day Be a Home Run

Last week, I visited a baseball stadium in the provinces. It took four hours to travel back and forth from home. I didn’t go just to watch baseball. There was a lecture near the place I went to, and the baseball stadium was nearby. The lecture ended just as the baseball game was about to start, and coincidentally, it was the day my favorite team was playing.

When the first inning began, I received a text from my 9-year-old child who was at home.

"Dad, where are you and what are you doing?"

I replied that I was working and would finish late today. He responded that he understood. Recently, my child started playing Little League baseball. He wants to be a catcher. After going to the baseball stadium together a few times, he grew to like baseball and started liking the team I support.

The game was a pitcher's duel with very few runs scored. My team was losing 1-0. Then, in the 'promised 7th inning,' we tied the game. When the second batter hit the tying run and his cheer song played, everyone around me and I shouted "Wow!" and kept chanting the player’s name. At that moment, I received another text from my child.

"Dad, I saw everything at the baseball stadium. You said you were working, so what are you doing there?"

Yes, I guess I was a bit too enthusiastic. Later, when I looked up the highlight video, I appeared on screen for several seconds in one shot.

To those uninterested, baseball might just seem like a trivial ball game. But there are people who spend money and time to watch others play this ball game. They sometimes immerse themselves excessively as if it were life itself. Why do they do that? In fact, they go not just to watch baseball, but to see the players playing baseball and to see themselves watching baseball. The stands are the boundary between the field and the outside world. They are filled with people who fervently hope that the player will get on base, that their team will win.

Everyone has their own reason for visiting the baseball stadium, or more precisely, the stands of the baseball stadium, but I know exactly why I love that space. I don’t know any other sport where you can cheer by shouting a person’s name dozens of times like in baseball. From the first batter to the ninth, each comes to bat at least three times, sometimes four or five. Each time, the player’s entrance music plays, fans sing the cheer song, and shout the player’s name, asking for a hit or a home run. From the top of the first inning to the bottom of the ninth, there are 54 outs combined for both teams. If each player gets on base about 15 times, there are roughly 80 plate appearances. If each name is shouted about 20 times, that means a player’s name is called over 1,000 times in three hours ? probably the only place where this happens. At the baseball stadium, I sense that we are beings capable of cheering for others like this.

Even when returning to daily life, the fact that you fervently cheered for someone remains engraved in your body. I must start my own game. At times like that, I often imagine someone shouting, "Kim Minseop, hit!" I have people in the stands cheering for me. When they start their own games, I also go to the stands to cheer for them. My child, who dreams of being a catcher and now texts me every evening asking if I’m at the baseball stadium, will also carry his school bag every day and start his own game. I send him my wholehearted support. May you also be cheered on, cheer for someone else, and have a day where you get on base today.

Kim Minseop, Social and Cultural Critic

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.