Baseball, dogs: What Yoon, Biden have in common

U.S. President Joe Biden takes a walk with his dog Commander, near his beach house in the Cape Henlopen neighborhood of Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, Dec. 28, 2021. REUTERS

Hopes are high that presidents' shared passion for dogs and baseball can break ice during summit

By Ko Dong-hwan

There's a lot of pressure on the first official meeting of Korea's newly inaugurated president with his U.S. counterpart this weekend, but the two presidents might try lightening the mood by discussing some of their common interests.

That's one scenario of how the May 21 summit between South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol and U.S. President Joe Biden could play out, thanks to what happen to be two interests they have in common: baseball and dogs.

The dogs being raised by Biden and Yoon have different kinds of habitats: one of Biden's two German shepherds, named Commander, lives in the White House with the presidential family, receiving treatment worthy of the country's "first dog." The other, Major, lives mostly with a trainer in Wilmington, Delaware, away from the White House after he bit a Secret Service agent and a National Park Service worker at the White House.

Commander, born in September 2021, was a birthday gift for the American president from his brother, James Biden, and sister-in-law, Sara Biden, when the president turned 79 on Nov. 20. The president's beloved German shepherd Champ had recently died at age 13 in June that year.

President Yoon Suk-yeol walks his dog Tori at the Han River Park, March 13. Courtesy of Yoon's presidential office

In addition to the canines, the Biden family adopted a tabby cat early this year.

While the White House bears a rich tradition of first families raising different pets (mostly dogs), Yoon, currently living in a luxurious apartment in Seoul's Seocho District, also has four dogs and three cats.

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The most famous of Yoon's pets is a dog named Tori, a Jindo breed the president adopted in 2012 from an agency that cares for abandoned dogs. Soon after the adoption, however, Tori sustained a critical injury in a car accident. Seeing the situation as hopeless, many told Yoon to euthanize the dog. But Yoon refused to do so, saying, "I brought Tori myself, and I mean to take Tori with me." After a couple of surgeries, Tori survived, but the dog's recovery required regular walks outside for exercise.

Since then, Yoon has often been spotted in public walking Tori. Even after he was elected Korea's president in March, he has been seen walking the dog, either in a city park along the Han River or near Acro Vista, the apartment complex where he lives in Seocho-dong.

Besides the dogs, the two presidents can talk plenty about baseball, as Yoon is passionate about the sport and Biden is famous for supporting the Philadelphia Phillies.

In this photo from Sept. 8, 2021, Yoon Suk-yeol, then the presidential candidate of the main opposition People Power Party, congratulates members of the baseball team of Choongam High School in Seoul's Eunpyeong District for winning a national baseball tournament earlier that month. Newsis

Yoon's admiration for the sport and its athletes dates back to 1971, when he was in the fifth grade of elementary school in Seoul. One of his grandfathers, Lee Bong-mo, then a lawmaker and a baseball fanatic, took the young Yoon to a dorm for members of Hanyang University's baseball team. (Lee, one of the school's key administrators, was managing the baseball team back then.) That's the moment when Yoon fell in love with baseball. Yoon frequented the dorm since then, even after moving on to middle school, staying in touch with the players he remembered even after he became a prosecutor years later.

After he became president, Yoon invited two players from Hanyang University to his inauguration on May 10, while even the top administrators from the country's baseball and softball associations weren't invited, which shows how fond the president is of his former baseball heroes.

When the baseball team of Choongam High School in Seoul's Eunpyeong District won a national tournament in September 2021, Yoon visited the school three days later to congratulate them. The president, a graduate of the school, was busy preparing for the main opposition People Power Party's primary to choose the party's presidential candidate at the time.

"As the soccer field at Eton College in England was once reputed to produce some of the greatest figures at the time, I think Choongam's baseball team has contributed to producing some of the greatest influencers in the country, who graduated from Choongam High School," Yoon told the young players. When one of the players asked him if they could visit the presidential office if he was elected president, Yoon immediately accepted the request.

Jimmy Kimmel, left, in a New York Mets cap, during his talk show aired in 2020, interviews Joe Biden, the U.S.' former vice president and then a presidential candidate. Biden wore a Philadelphia Phillies cap in response to Kimmel's Mets cap. Screenshot from Twitter

Biden's passion for the Phillies became widely known in the U.S. in 2020, when he appeared on ABC talk show "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" When the host, Kimmel, conducted the interview in a New York Mets hat, Biden countered by putting on a Phillies cap.

"That's not the way to win voters, Mr. Vice President," Kimmel said, as Biden was running for the presidency back then against Donald Trump.

"Well, I'll tell you what, it's the way to be able to sleep with my wife!" Biden said. "She's a Philly girl. If I wore something other than the Phillies, I'd be out of luck, man."

It was clear that Biden's wife, first lady Jill Biden, was a more avid baseball fan than he was. The president, in 2012 when he was vice president, said during a press conference at the White House that his wife kept a bobblehead of Jimmy Rollins from the Phillies at her bedside, and every night when he gave a good night kiss to her and rolled aside, he had to watch it standing on the nightstand next to him.

"He made it very clear that bobblehead JRoll was the only person he would ever allow in the bedroom with his wife!" Rollins, who was at the White House with Biden in 2012, said on Instagram in 2020. "He had us all in tears."