How Korean Baseball Changed My Life (okay, not really)

There has not been a live sporting event on television for a couple of months now and I'm reaching the depths of despair. 

The wide world of sports have always been one of my main escapes from the real world and I'm not afraid to confess that I really, really  miss it.

So how desperate am I to watch a little friendly competition? Well, yesterday I watched Korean baseball. 

For real. Korean baseball. 

The game featured the Samsung Lions versus the LG Twins. The game interested me deeply because my Samsung television is connected to an LG soundbar. I mean, what are the chances? (Trust me, I can't make this stuff up). 

Members of the LG Twins, whose names I cannot pronounce.

As the contest unfolded, the broadcasters (who were quarantined in their own hotel rooms, watching the game on t.v.) remarked that Korean baseball was different from Japanese baseball, which itself was different from American baseball. 

To be honest, it looked like baseball to me. And it was a very welcomed distraction.

A thought occurred to me while watching this game, as the Korean baseball scores zipped along the crawler at the bottom of the screen: Hyundai Unicorns, KIA Tigers, Kiwoom Heroes, Hanwha Eagles, Doosan Bears -- all of these teams were represented by corporations, not cities. 

While Kiwoom, Hanwha, Lotte and Doosan are not that familiar to our American ears, we are very familiar with their subsidiaries (for example, Doosan owns the Bobcat Corporation, although they perpetuate the illusion of being an American company by keeping their corporate offices located in Fargo, North Dakota). 

I started to contemplate the possibility of American baseball someday being represented solely by corporations, rather than cities. After all, the NBA is already allowing sponsors on their jerseys (the Milwaukee Bucks were brought to you by Harley Davidson -- at least they were in 2017).  

Since Nike plastered their brand across one side of the jersey, why not balance it out with an advertiser and increase the revenue stream for the team and the NBA?

Imagine the 3M Twins, rather than the Minnesota Twins. Or the Bird's Eye Orioles rather than the Baltimore Orioles. 

Hey, it is not beyond the realm of possibility. In fact, in 2022 Major League Baseball is going to allow advertising patches on their uniforms, which violates the basic laws of the American baseball universe. What would Yogi Berra say?

However, this might be the start of something much bigger. A toe in the water, so to speak.

I am guessing it will prove to be very profitable for professional baseball. So why not let corporations take over the whole shebang? Sure it would ruin city-versus-city showdowns and state-versus-state battles, but what does that matter if you're making money hand over fist? 

Or are some things in our country, like tradition and rivalry, still more important than immense profit?

Nah, probably not. But I'd like to think otherwise. 

Such are my thoughts on these long, quarantine days as I watch the only live sporting event in the world played some 6,100 miles away.

That's 2020 in a nutshell: Sitting alone in my living room, drinking Coors Light, being entertained by Korean baseball played in a cavernous, spectator-less stadium, called by quartantined commentators, somewhere in the bowels of South Korea.