SEOUL, South KoreaSEOUL, South Korea — Imagine flying nearly 6,100 miles across 16 time zones, through sleep deprivation and wallet-draining investments that spiked to as much as $12,000, to see a baseball game.
And … not getting in.
Call it the Seoul Swing and Miss.
In a mix of misunderstanding and dice-rolling, fans for the Padres and Dodgers schlepped all the way to Asia for Major League Baseball’s two-game opener between the Padres and Dodgers.
Many thought the age-old American tradition of ticket scalping and ingenuity would get them into Gocheok Sky Dome. Some hoped spare seats would pop up for games or pre-series exhibitions and land in lucky hands.
Thought and hope grounded out.
“We talked to some Dodgers fans at the DMZ (dividing North and South Korea),” said Wendy Shigenaga, who lives in La Jolla with husband Thomas Baker. “We met Dodgers fans who were in the same boat.
“This is the equalizer. We’re all dressed up and ready to go, but can’t get in.”
That left Shigenaga and Baker — he in his Joe Musgrove jersey, she repping Korean Ha-Seong Kim — about $8,000 lighter, scrambling to organize watch parties with other fans left at the international baseball altar.
That’s a long, long way to go to a bar.
“It is what it is,” Baker said before the Dodgers won Game 1 on Wednesday, 5-2. “If you go through your life being angry about things you have no control over, you’re going to have a pretty miserable life.”
Fans began to connect as tourists at the Seoul Tower, the city’s most visible landmark, rising 777 feet above Mount Namsan. They began to strategize at Gyeongbokgung Palace, built in 1395 and covering the equivalent of more than 75 football fields.
They found each other at local markets, sidewalk food stands and anywhere brown and gold or Dodger blue fired up a flare. They decided to make chicken salad out of chicken you-know-what.
Modern-day problems called for modern-day solutions, so they jumped on the social network Reddit to organize.
“We bought our flights in March or April of last year,” said San Diego’s Justin Hill, who made the far-flung trip with his wife Kristine. “We just figured more information would come out, then it never did. We understood we might not get tickets.
“We’re trying not to let it bum us out and have fun. Seoul has exceeded our expectations. They’ve been kind and helpful. We’re meeting a ton of Padres fans, so it’s great.”
The couple visited Seoul Tower, which features a collection of love locks like the famed Ponts des Arts tourist magnet in Paris.
They found a lock placed by Kim, the Padres shortstop. They connected theirs to his.
It was the closest they would get to their favorite team on the trip.
“Yeah, unfortunately,” Justin said. “That’s just how it worked out.”
The gambit revolved around the longest of shots and a confusing and constricted ticket-buying system in a small stadium, which seats 16,744 for baseball.
Season-ticket holders were entered into a lottery for a few hundred tickets, though Padres officials declined to say exactly how many. The game sold out in 8 minutes, forcing those who were shut out to navigate a maddening system run by e-commerce sponsor Coupang Play.
That required ordering with a Korean phone number. That meant picking up a SIM card on Seoul soil. Shigenaga and Baker were told it was not the right type of Korean number. There were no ticket windows.
Frustrations mounted.
“I think MLB could have made it more of an event,” Baker said. “If you didn’t have a ticket to the game, you could still have a baseball experience like the All-Star Game. But there was nothing at the stadium or anywhere.
“We were at the dome and we couldn’t buy a souvenir without getting past the ticket area.”
The Padres’ exhibition Monday against the LG Twins had less than 7,000 fans inside.
No dice, again.
“The people at Coupang confirmed there over 1,000 tickets available, but said there was nothing we could do,” Baker said.
Those who got in fully understood their good fortune.
Jason Romero of Chula Vista and Jose Villegas of San Ysidro attended middle school and high school together and each attended college in the Bay Area.
Villegas scored on the Padres lottery, bringing his wife for about $8,000 that includes a side trip to Japan. Romero, who plopped down about $12,000 for his family, got creative.
When Romero missed on the lottery, he called in a favor.
“We had a friend who used the Korean version of StubHub,” said Romero, likely meaning Coupang. “Face value on our tickets down the third-base line was $280. We spent about $1,000 a ticket.
“I’m all in on the Padres. It’s more of a love like family. When you see your family taking on a life event, you want to be there for that. When we heard they were coming to Korea, we bought flights, hoping to get tickets.
“We rolled the dice.”
The far-from-in crowd rolled up jersey sleeves and shifted to optimism mode.
Shigenaga and Baker stayed at Dragon Hill Lodge, on the grounds that housed U.S. forces in South Korea from 1945 to 2017. The Hills stumbled on a restaurant, in a mall of all places, that earned a Michelin guide shout-out seven years ago. They even caught a game between KBO staples LG Twins and Kiwoom Heroes.
“We said, let’s quit boo-hooing about it,” Shigenaga said. “We’re here. Let’s make the most of this trip.”
Chicken salad after all.
