Korea professional baseball to see 100 millionth spectator

By Yoon Chul

Staff reporter

Korea's 28 year-old professional baseball league may see its 100 millionth spectator over the weekend.

The Korea Baseball Organization (KBO) revealed Friday that the league needs only 160,270 to attend to make history. As an average of 12,538 spectators have gone to each of this season's games the KBO expects to set the new record with eight match-ups scheduled this weekend.

The Korea Baseball League (KBL), which started in 1982, has had 97,482,493 fans attending games up to the start of this season, and in the 188 games so far this year 2,357,237 have watched matches.

The KBL saw over one million spectators in its inaugural year and on April, 1997 it notched its 50 millionth.

Though the enthusiasm for baseball is interrupted by bad weather, there have been 44 sell-out crowds this season.

The Nippon Professional Baseball, which started in 1950, took 13 years to attract the same number of fans, while Major League Baseball took 18.

The KBO is planning a special gift for the 100 millionth fan as well as the 99,999,999th and 100,000,001st.

Eagles boss announces Ryu's appearance date

The manager of the seventh ranked Hanwha Eagles, Han Dae-hwa, announced Thursday that he will send lefty ace Ryu Hyun-jin to the mound Tuesday against the second ranked SK Wyverns.

"As Ryu threw almost 130 pitches last Tuesday, pitching on Sunday would be too much," Han said.

This means the anticipated match-up between two lefty aces, Ryu and Kim Kwang-hyun of the Wyverns could be realized.

"The reason for my early announcement is to hand the choice over to the Wyverns manager Kim Sung-keun," Eagles boss said.

"But the chance of a clash between the pair is still low," added Han.

Kim has put in a good performance collecting four wins in his first five appearances. But from May 5, he struggled with just two wins from four games.

After Kim allowed four runs in five innings against the Samsung Lions, Tuesday, he was sent to the second tier team.

While Kim has a 4-2 record with a 3.06 ERA in nine appearances pitching 50 innings, Ryu is 7-2 with 1.85 ERA and has a league-leading 73 strikeouts, in 78 innings in 10 games.

Ryu and Kim are two of the league's best young left-handed pitchers and led the Korean team to the gold medal in the Beijing Olympics and runner-up in the second World Baseball Classic.

The fans have been waiting for the pair to clash but it has not happened since Kim debuted in the KBO in 2007. Ryu entered the KBO a year earlier.