Min Woo Joo
KBO the Korean baseball league started league in May 5th through the Coronavirus outbreak behind closed doors. And itself made few interesting episodes such as what players say go live loud and clear since there’s no crowd. But it wasn’t the talk of the game. It was that KBO was broadcasted in US through ESPN, US sports cable channel. American baseball league is not clear when or how to restart the league and baseball fans were eager to watch baseball games.
After the broadcast was settled, ESPN and other sports magazines started to introduce KBO and its teams for fans to pick a team to root. Also, there is a thing called bat flip which is that hitter throws or let go their bat after the hit. It isn’t officially banned in baseball, but it is considered offensive to the pitcher and the team in MLB. But in Korea, it is not at all considered offensive or an insult but considered showmanship instead. It was quite a shock for US baseball fans who didn’t saw the bat flip quite often. MLB was posed an issue by many fans about too much rigorism that kills entertainment and that makes KBO more interesting to MLB fans.
Best bit of this is the NC Dinos. NC is NCSOFT, sponsor of NC Dinos, but it is also short for North Carolina which there are no major league baseball team. Even the mascot of the NC Dinos which is obviously dinosaurs, is related to North Carolina. North Carolina is famous for fossil and its study. Baseball fans in North Carolina started to root for NC Dinos as their quaran-team(teams to root while quarantine situation) like it is the destiny. North Carolina Triple A baseball team Durham Bulls announced to root for NC Dinos and even the governor Roy Cooper twitted about NC Dinos too.
◎ Photo Credit: ESPN, Roy Cooper Twitter
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