Abstract
This study investigates the multiplicity of South Korean Major League Baseball fans, with a focus on the tensions that they experience under the nationalistic aura surrounding MLB fandom while pursuing their individual hobby. For this purpose, it employs the idea of “post-Westernization” to interpret baseball as a global sport and examine its recent popularity in South Korea. By exploring the activities and voices of an online community among Korean fans, it demonstrates how national desires were complicated when they collided with a global strategy during the first World Baseball Classic in 2006. Analysis of Korean MLB fans during the WBC indicates both the possibilities and the limits of global baseball as a case of post-Westernization. The study shows that becoming an MLB fan in South Korea is at the intersection of national identity (nationalist fervor for MLB), regional rivalry (against Japan, the former colonizer) and global sensibilities (American sport fandom). Korean fans’ responses can be summarized as the national-regional-global nexus in which they perceive the existence of regional and global hierarchies, but they also routinely contest their own and each others’ perceptions. Finally, it suggests that fans’ articulation of the national, regional, and global are far from being fixed or unidirectional: they are constantly under construction.
Keywords
Introduction
This study aims to explore how the local South Korean fans respond to, consume, or even appropriate a global sporting event. It will investigate South Korean Major League Baseball fans and their online community. In particular, an international baseball event, the World Baseball Classic (hereafter WBC), which was organized by Major League Baseball (hereafter MLB) in March 2006, provides a strategic case in which we can analyze and interpret diverse and even contradictory responses of the local fans of global sports. In the WBC, Korean MLB fans were not only fascinated with watching the performances of MLB players with different national teams, but also thrilled with the consecutive victories of their national team. Such multiplicity among the local fans’ desires gives us a hint of explaining the multifaceted nature vis-à-vis local consumption of a global commodity.
Since global cultural products, particularly those of American pop culture, have been circulated around the globe, much academic attention has been given to their influence on local people and, consequently, to the resultant transformations of locals’ cultural and national identities. As it attempts to illuminate unalienable agencies and the inevitable resistance of the (ex-)colonized, postcolonial theory has provided important insights as well as fundamental concepts such as mimicry, multiculturalism, diaspora, hybridity, and subaltern (Bhabha, 1994; Clifford, 1997; Young, 2001). Despite its contributions, the major trends in postcolonial theory tend to focus on identity politics among immigrants who have settled mostly in Europe or in the US (Ang, 2001; Gillespie, 1995; Gilroy, 1993). Rather than repeating the frame of postcolonial study, this study investigates the other side of identity politics by focusing on the transformation of identity among people who remain in their home countries and are also affected by structural and cultural globalization. In South Korea (hereafter Korea), the rise of MLB fandom as one of American pop culture coincided with its national restructuring under globalization when the Korean governments agreed to follow the advice of the International Monetary Fund between 1997 and 2001.
This study employs the idea of “post-Westernization” developed by Rumford (2007) to frame and interpret the ways Korean fans enjoy baseball and the WBC. Asia’s growing political and economic power enables it to “become increasingly central to the political economy of global sport” (Little, 2012: 173). Vast numbers of Asians enjoy global sports as practitioners, spectators, and fans; the Asian markets have emerged as powerhouses for broadcasting global sporting events and related goods; and many of these events have been hosted by Asian cities. However, the case of Korea, as well as East Asia in general, has remained understudied in the sociology of sport. Given the increasing importance of East Asia in the professional, institutional, and economic dimensions of global sports, it is opportune and necessary to explore how Korean fans enjoy and appropriate baseball as a global sport. To observe the daily practices of local baseball fans, this study applies an ethnographic approach to their online community as its major methodology. In doing so, it demonstrates how Korean fans’ national desires are complicated through colliding with regional rivalries such as Japan and Taiwan and navigating MLB’s global strategies during the 2006 WBC.
Baseball in East Asia: from Americanization to post-Westernization
Precipitated by new telecommunication technologies, the globalization of sports prompts another discussion on identity issues (Maguire, 1999; Miller et al., 2001). In particular, the global expansion of US sports encourages critical researchers to investigate identity issues among global sports fans. The National Basketball Association-Nike-Michael Jordan triad and its global expansion serve as the best example (Andrews, 2001). The perceived threat to local cultural identities has often been characterized as a form of Americanization or cultural imperialism in general (Tomlinson, 1991). 1 Compared to basketball, however, baseball as a global sport occupies an ambiguous position. On the one hand, MLB has recently tried to expand its markets to generate more foreign revenue. It established Major League Baseball International (hereafter MLBI) in the 1990s, and “the largest share of MLBI revenue is derived from the sale of broadcast rights in foreign markets” (Klein, 2006: 3). As America’s pastime, on the other hand, baseball is still a very parochial, i.e. American, sport. The East Asian and Latin American countries, where baseball is popularly practiced beyond US territory, have or had been under American hegemony (Szymanski and Andrew, 2005). To put it simply, by and large, baseball is a symbol of American hegemony, but, “baseball has never developed the global character of soccer” (Kelly, 2007: 188).
The next questions concern how local fans deal with such an ambiguity. In other words, how do those who enjoy global sporting events respond to or embrace their national and local roots? Are the identities they construct through consuming global sports more nationalistic or more cosmopolitan? The efforts to explicate the interplay between these global and local forces contribute to understanding the reshaping of cultural spaces of identity within the new global media (Andrews et al., 1996). In this vein, the ways in which the popularity of MLB has increased in East Asia provide useful cases for exploring such an articulation between the local and the global. In other words, the MLB debuts of their own national players contributed to boosting the popularity of MLB in each country: Nomo Hideo and Ichiro Suzuki from Japan, Chan-ho Park from Korea, and Chien-ming Wang from Taiwan are the representative cases (Chen, 2012; Cho, 2008; Nakamura, 2005). While MLB utilizes the nationalist sentiments of local fans to expand its market into East Asia, local fans watch, consume, and even enjoy MLB games for their own (nationalist) ends. In this sense, sporting nationalism contributes to popularizing global sports among local fans (Appadurai, 2011), while nationalism itself is also transformed in the local settings. National aspects—the nation-state and nationalism—still play a role as “an enduring ‘space of identity’ … accompanying the spread of transnational global capitalism” (Andrews and Silk, 2005: 175).
So far, we understand the globalization of sports in local conditions under the umbrella term of glocalization (Cho, 2009; Cho et al., 2012; Giulianotti and Robertson, 2012; Robertson, 1995). At the same time, as Rumford suggests, “it would be a mistake not to interrogate the nation-global nexus a little further” (2007: 204). In this sense, the idea of “post-Westernization,” which Rumford (2007) conceptualizes for the case of world cricket, is useful for inquiring into the changing status of baseball as a global sport and its recent popularity in East Asia as a postcolonial society of American hegemony. Rumford suggests the idea of post-Westernization to explicate both “a power shift in cricket administration away from the traditional ‘Western’ centres towards the Asian countries” and “the increasing importance of one-day cricket and the prominence of the one-day international match” (2007: 203). In order to address whether MLB fandom in Korea and baseball in East Asia is another example of the post-Westernization of global sports, it is useful to refer to brief sketches of baseball’s trajectories in East Asia and the emergence of MLB fandom in Korea.
Since its introduction, local practitioners of baseball, particularly in East Asia, have received and played baseball, or America’s pastime, in a dual manner. While baseball was promoted “as embodying American values and inculcating an American character,” “the local players and promoters could and did respond with considerable creativity and even irreverence” (Kelly, 2007: 193). While it was American missionaries who first introduced baseball into East Asia, “the Japanese are, and have been for decades, the dominant missionaries of baseball in Asia,” spreading the sport to its former colonies such as Korea and Taiwan (Reaves, 2002: 3). During the Cold War, there was a revival of baseball, and it was heavily played in Japan, Korea, and Taiwan under American military, political, and economic influence (Kim, 2008; Reaves, 2002). In East Asia today, baseball has become one of the region’s leading sports through the popularity of its high school leagues and national professional leagues. In fact, Taiwan was very successful on the international level at the International Little League in Williamsport, US, during the 1960s and 1980s (Bjarkman, 2005).
In Korea, baseball was revived under American hegemony after World War II, and the first professional league by the Korean Baseball Organization (hereafter KBO), was inaugurated in 1982 under the military government. Since then, baseball and the KBO have become the most popular sport and league in Korea (Kim, 2008). The sudden emergence of MLB fandom in the late 1990s coincided with the country’s national economic crisis, which was caused mainly by a shortage of foreign funds between 1997 and 2001. During those years, Korea’s first MLB player, Chan-ho Park, played very well in MLB. Not only were his great performances broadcast on Korean national television networks, but he was also represented across all media as a national hero during the national crisis. Not surprisingly, many Koreans began to take a huge interest in MLB, not only because a Korean athlete was playing, but also because of the Korean government’s active participation in promoting MLB, and images of Park, in Korea. In other words, as MLB—a global commodity—became central to a national discourse in Korea during a period of national crisis, representations of Park in MLB functioned as an effective part of nationalistic and political ideology (Cho, 2008). 2 In this sense, the MLB fandom in Korea as well as its national frenzy over the first WBC in 2006 provide an exemplary case for exploring how global sports and sporting events such as MLB and the WBC have intersected with re-constituting national identities among local fans. By applying the “post-Westernization” perspective to the case of baseball as a global sport, this study illuminates the ways Korean fans constitute their individual and collective identities as they enjoy the commodity of American sports and interact in their online community.
Methodology: online ethnography
To investigate how Korean fans consume and enjoy MLB, this study adopts online ethnography as its methodology. 3 An ethnographic approach is useful for observing concrete, diverse, and even contradictory responses of Korean MLB fans, who are no longer limited to a geographical place but rather connect with each other on the Internet (Andrews et al., 2005). 4 Applying ethnography to the Internet, especially in an online community, is not entirely unique in media studies or anthropology. 5 Because Internet research requires a unique combination of fields as well as methods and approaches, researchers seldom rely only on their observation of online communities. Rather, combined methods have been applied; for example, Baym (2000) used participant observation as a primary methodology along with distributing surveys and compiling relevant statistical information, and Miller and Slater (2000) combined formal interviews, house-to-house questionnaires, and informal encounters to explore online discussion groups. As a part of the larger project that examines the structures of nationalism in Korea, I also employ online ethnography, which combines several methods including participatory observation, face-to-face interviews, and informal encounters with interviewees.
For the research field, I chose the most popular and active website for Korean MLB fans, MLBPARK (www.mlbpark.com), which was formed in 2001. In 2006, the number of registered IDs was approximately 90,000, about 600 to 700 posts were submitted daily, and the number of page views in one day reached nearly 2.5 million on March 18, 2006, the day that the Korean and Japanese national teams met in the World Baseball Classic. 6 Within the community, fans expressed diverse opinions about Park and his contribution to the popularity of MLB in South Korea. The community includes a wide range of fans, from novices who follow only Korean players in MLB to true fanatics who can enumerate the records of their favorite teams and player statistics in detail. Moreover, many fans regard this online space as a community in which they not only exchange opinions and obtain information about MLB, but also share unrelated personal stories and details of their daily lives. During the 2006 WBC, the community was swamped with many Korean fans of baseball and new MLB fans.
As a member of MLBPARK since 2001, and a fan of baseball and MLB, I was able to recognize its advantages as a research object: its huge membership, diverse thoughts on MLB, and active disputes among members. Then, I partook in participatory observation of the community between 2005 and 2006. I updated my postings on MLB (mostly on the Chicago Cubs) weekly, read all the headings and most postings, and noted the heated debates and postings that intrigued me. At the same time, during the summer of 2005, I recruited and interviewed 14 fans through the community. 7 I treated my observation of MLBPARK as a primary method, and data from face-to-face interviews as supplementary. This decision had practical a basis: I realized that many of the 14 interviewees did not actively participate in the online community. Such a condition forced me to consider the issue of representativeness; namely, how to argue that interviews with members whose participation was skewed toward observing could adequately represent Korean fans and the community. As a strategic choice, I decided to examine the implications of the online postings as the primary resource, and made use of interviews for expanding, and often confirming, my research inquiries. 8 Since most interactions in the online community consist of postings and replies, it is necessary to treat postings as layered activities which express fans’ intentions, opinions, desires, interactions, and relationships. Observation and analysis of members’ posts can provide critical clues for tracing how local fans construct their thoughts and identities (Fischer, 1999). Therefore, posts and their contents are not only authentic objects of ethnography but also ample resources through which to explore the multi-dimensional, and even contradictory, desires between national roots and global pop culture.
Nonetheless, I still have to approach the data collected from online ethnography with caution. The multiplicity, or even arbitrariness, of online identities is an interesting and even difficult issue, and the thoughts in the postings may be neither transparent nor straightforward. My rationale is that my fieldwork experiences, i.e. participatory observation of MLBPARK, serve as “the key to contextualizing interviews and other elicitation methods researchers employ to understand a particular phenomenon” (Horst et al., 2012: 89). 9 In this sense, I suggest that online ethnography does not seek holistic explication, but rather aims at generating partial, particularized, and contingent accounts of specific encounters between local fans and global sports, which ultimately contribute to enlarging our understanding of the transformation of individual and collective (national) identities in a global era (Wilson, 2007).
Korean MLB fans and the 2006 World Baseball Classic
Vignette: Asian MLB Fans Watch the Yankees’ Game at Old Dominion University
In September 2005, I traveled to Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia to see an interviewee, Kim, who I had first met during the summer. Kim was an exchange student at Old Dominion for the fall semester, and we planned to go to RFK center in Washington D.C. to watch an MLB game. Before our departure, on Friday evening, we happened to watch a Yankees game with his Japanese friend, who was also an MLB fan. While most of the American students were busy going to parties, only us three Asians stayed to watch the MLB game in the dorm lounge. What an awkward scene we made! Then, an American student who was taking an interest in us got excited when he recognized a Japanese player with the Yankees.“He is a Japanese player…I know him, Hideki Matsui.” Kim’s Japanese friend quickly responded to him, saying, “Thank you. Thank you!” But the American did not stop there, enumerating a couple more Japanese players in MLB, at which point the Japanese friend seemed to be really pleased. It was interesting to observe such an awkward conversation between two strangers about MLB. During the trip, however, certain questions kept haunting me: “Why did or should the Japanese friend say ‘Thank you’?” and “Was I jealous that the American only remembered Japanese MLB players, and not any Koreans?” (Research notes, 2005)
In explicating the globalization of cricket, Rumford summarizes three key dimensions of post-Westernization: 1) the lack of unity in Western countries; 2) no single global modernity, but different modernities; and 3) the emergence of a new East capable of shaping global affairs (2007: 205–206). From its preparation process to its outcome, the first WBC in 2006 resulted in various and even contradictory consequences from the perspective of post-Westernization.
On the one hand, the ways of preparing and holding the event illuminated that “the hegemony of the U.S. organizational power revealed world baseball’s skewed landscape” (Kelly, 2007: 189). The first WBC took place in March 2006 in the US. A total of 16 countries from various continents participated, and many major leaguers joined their national teams. However, this was the first international event to be initiated and organized by MLB. From the beginning, the WBC was regarded as an event for grafting MLB into the longstanding, multi-level baseball organizations and competitions in various countries rather than for promoting baseball’s popularity around the globe. In this sense, MLB’s decision to inaugurate the WBC seemed to indicate that a single unity of the West, or America, still dominated global modernity, with the East still being marginalized.
On the other hand, the results of the first WBC were unexpected: while the US team struggled, East Asian teams and some Central American teams showed strong performances to global and national fans. In particular, Japan won the first WBC, and Korea was finished third. Meanwhile, local baseball fans in Japan and Korea were excited with the event and their national teams, which had exceeded their expectations. While the Korean national team won six games in a row, including two victories against Japan, the national team’s excellent showing fueled fervor for the event—in addition, of course, to the national imperative to beat Japan. Such superb performances by East Asian teams and the resulting high levels of interest in the WBC in those countries indicated that East Asia, as both practitioners and consumers, would emerge as another powerhouse in global baseball. By exploring the Korean fans’ responses to the event, the following section closely examines the possibilities of global baseball as a case of the post-Westernization.
Baseball and nationalism as a globalizing strategy
News of the WBC broke in the Korean Internet community in early July of 2005. Ironically, at about the same time, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) voted to drop baseball from the Summer Olympic Games starting in 2012. Not only because of unfamiliarity with the WBC, which was after all a new event, but also because of this news about the Olympics, fans were furious with MLB’s response to the IOC and treated the launch of the WBC very sarcastically. They pointed out that MLB (which they called shamelessly selfish) would have cared more about the IOC vote if it had had any vision of globalizing baseball itself.
Lonely Wolf: The issue is that the MLB Commissioner’s Office has paid too little attention to the IOC and the Olympics. If baseball is ousted from the Olympics, MLB deserves the blame. If it holds the WBC and ignores the Olympics, I think that MLB is not interested in expanding baseball itself, but aims only to make money.
10
Similarly, some fans stated that “the WBC was a means for advertising MLB. Instead of the Olympics, MLB indulges in petty schemes through this event.” Such hostile responses to the WBC were closely related to Koreans’ low expectations of the national team in the event. Many fans predicted that the countries that had more MLB players, such as the US and Central American countries, would dominate the event. They were also concerned about the games against other Asian countries, particularly Japan, which was of course a major contender for the championship, and Taiwan, which had become a threatening opponent (Reaves, 2002). 11 However, some fans were pleased that they could enjoy watching MLB players even in the off-season, and they hoped that the WBC would contribute to expanding baseball in the world.
Sheed: The WBC seems to be set for success in terms of commercial ends because it will be held in March, so many MLB players can join their own teams. Based on the earnings ratio, the U.S. will get the most money because it will probably win the event. Nonetheless, I am excited for this event.
Such ambivalent responses among fans showed that some fans had penetrated MLB’s intention, i.e. to utilize the WBC as a way of globalizing MLB, as well as recognizing that the WBC was “another Major League Baseball production, politically and economically crafted by and for MLB, with an international case” (Klein, 2006: 246).
During the WBC, fans often pointed out its hypocritical aspects, particularly how it seemed to be skewed so that the US team would advance to the final round. As it was structured, two teams from each of the four regional groups would advance into the second round, but both teams would be a part of the same group in the second round. Then, the two best teams from that second-round group would advance to the semi-finals. The US team was intentionally organized into a group with teams from Asia in the second round. This system clearly favored the US, which could avoid facing other strong contenders such as Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and Venezuela until the final game. These circumstances made fans suspect that the Korean team might just be serving as a stepping stone for MLB, the US, and Japan. Likewise, the process of organizing the WBC reaffirms that “there is a single centre to the baseball world and it is in New York, not Lausanne (home of the International Baseball Federation), at the MLB Commissioner’s Office” (Kelly, 2007: 190).
However, this ambivalent reaction soon changed when the Korean team won six games in a row, including two victories against Japan and one against the US. Not only fans in the Internet community, but also Koreans in general and the Korean mass media became increasingly enthusiastic. The victories against Japan proved to be the most significant incidents in promoting nationalism to its fullest extent in Korea. After the second win in Anaheim, Seo, a Korean pitcher for the New York Mets, put the Korean national flag on the mound, and the image traveled worldwide over the Internet. Fans were quick to point out that the mental strength and national commitment of the Korean team was the basis for this unprecedented accomplishment in Korean baseball history. As Joo suggests, “the loyalties and allegiances, as well as the emotions and passions inspired by sport, blend well with the emotional requisites for nationalism in the global era” (2012: 13).
Rose: United through patriotism, the Korean team is dominating the Japanese and U.S. teams. Baseball is called a mental game, so Korean leaguers are not intimidated by their opponents and show their mental superiority. I am so very proud of our players: at least for today, the Korean leaguers are the best in the world.
Fans’ excitement and nationalistic comments revealed the role sport has played in constructing a new nationalism, and how national identity can be remobilized through an international sporting event. For the semifinal game, which pitted the Korean team against Japan for the third time, an organized “Mass Street Support” took place in South Korea with cheerleaders and performers such as popular singers on stages across Seoul. The Korean mass media broadcast not only the game but also updates of the street support throughout the day.
The case of the WBC shows that a global entity such as MLB fully recognizes nationalism as a tool for selling or globalizing itself. As observed in the sudden fervor in Korea, nationalistic discourses still serve to stimulate a significant interest from people and the media in MLB, a global commodity. National and global sensibilities were obviously combined during the WBC as MLB utilized nationalism to expand its parent corporation’s popularity (Andrews and Silk, 2005). 12 Such an articulation between the national and the global illuminates how “the concept of the ‘nation’ is increasingly reimagined, represented and articulated by the process of ‘corporate nationalism’” (Kobayasi, 2012: 43). At the same time, Korean fans recognized MLB’s intentions, and responded and enjoyed the event and their national team’s victories for their own (nationalistic) purposes. As Giulianotti and Robertson already discussed in the case of football, “the apparently more exploitative, economic motors of globalization may be contested at local level through populist yet divisive discourses such as explicit nationalism” (2004: 557).
These seemingly contradictory responses show that the globalization of sports does not necessarily oppose the national but is allied with it despite contesting it at times. In other words, such responses necessitate more attention on how “nationalism and globalization are intertwined” in order to capture the “complex interplay between global and national identity politics in global sporting culture” (Lee and Maguire, 2009: 8). Furthermore, such an articulation between nationalism and globalization in global baseball is not clearly explained by the concept of post-Westernization, which invites further discussion and theoretical elaboration to the thesis of post-Westernization.
Baseball and regional rivalry
As per Bairner’s suggestion that rival political identities are constructed in (international) sports (2002), Japan has been the biggest rival of Korea at almost every sporting event. Such obsessive competition with Japan exists not only because Korea was colonized by Japan for 36 years, but also because sport is a way for Korea to both compete against and emulate Japan (Ok, 2007). Old regional conflicts were revived by the WBC but with a new twist: the presence of Asian players in MLB enabled athletes, as national representatives of formerly colonized nations, to face national representatives of their former colonizers on supposedly neutral ground. In doing so, the WBC became a postcolonial theater in which the former colonizer (Japan) and the former colonized (Taiwan and Korea) of East Asia competed against each other in front of American and global audiences who were able to watch the games live.
Korean MLB fans’ sense of regionality during the WBC was augmented by the way the tournament was formatted. First-round pools, each containing four teams, were organized according to geographical proximity. As a result, Pool A (the Asian region) consisted of China, Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan, and was played in Tokyo. Regional tensions within this pool were predictably immense. For example, baseball is much more popular and meaningful in the Republic of China (ROC or Taiwan) than in the People’s Republic of China (Mainland China) (Yu, 2007). When the ROC team was originally billed as “Taiwan” and planned to march under the ROC national flag, however, immediate pressure from the People’s Republic compelled MLBI to change the listing to “Chinese Taipei” and the ROC to use its Olympic flag. 13
Formatting and scheduling caused other tensions as well. The top two teams from each pool advanced from Round 1 to Round 2, where the teams from Pools A and B were combined into a new Pool 1 and the teams from pools C and D formed a new Pool 2 for round-robin play. This unconventional arrangement forced some regional teams to face each other again. Next, the winners and runners-up from each pool were to face each other in the semifinals as a single-elimination bracket. Interestingly, the best two teams from the same pool reached the same semi-final instead of being re-assigned to different pools as they advanced. Eventually, Korea and Japan played each other three times—in Rounds 1 and 2, and the semifinal—and Korea won the first two games, with Japan winning the semifinal.
In its regional round, Korean fans were particularly concerned with the results of the games against its regional rivals such as Taiwan and Japan. In the preceding 10 years, Taiwan had defeated South Korea in a couple of international events. Since most Korean baseball fans regarded South Korean baseball as second-best in Asia, after Japan (Bjarkman, 2005; Reaves, 2006), they worried that a Taiwanese victory against their national team would damage the status of Korean baseball region-wide. Thus, when South Korea beat Taiwan in their very first meeting, fans were not only ecstatic but also uniformly delighted to save face against the other regional team.
Penelope Cruz: It seemed that Taiwanese players were a bit daunted by the name of Park Chanho, a veteran MLB player. Higsgrace: Thanks to our MLB players, the Korean team could beat the Taiwanese team, which prepared for the event for several months… Several Korean pitchers did their duties excellently. Nonetheless, we can no longer overlook Taiwanese baseball: Taiwanese hitters who faced Korean MLB pitchers had a difficult time, but, at the same time, Korean players from KBO did not have much success against Taiwanese pitchers.
After the Taiwanese team had been eliminated in the first round, Korean fans’ attention automatically turned to their team’s game against Japan. Even before the first pitch, regional tensions were brought to a fever pitch by Japanese outfielder, Ichiro Suzuki. Suzuki, as the leader of his team, declared in a press conference that it would take 30 years for the Korean team to be as competitive as the Japanese team. This blunder outraged many Korean fans. After Japan’s first lost to Korea, however, Suzuki quickly became the object of stinging mockery.
Arimang73: I want to hear Ichiro’s comment on the game. How dare he announce that the Korean team needs 30 years to catch up with the Japanese team? I expect his snobbishness would be hurt with this loss. Dr. G.: I am really impressed by Park’s gesture of victory at the end. Following him, unconsciously, I pumped my fists.
The climax of the first round, for the final count of the final inning, was a face-off between Suzuki batting and Park pitching. When Park triumphed on an infield fly, the fans exclaimed that their hero had crushed the pride of Japanese baseball. Moreover, they savored the perfect ending supplied by Park and Suzuki, who respectively represented Korea and Japan in MLB.
Next, both the Korean and Japanese teams moved to the US for the second-round pool and Korea again beat Japan. Korean fans were proud of the Korean team as the world recognized the capacity of Korean baseball as well as Korea as a whole.
Minnesota: It was a great pleasure to witness the wonderful victory by the Korean team. What a great day it was!!!
Two consecutive victories over Japan enabled some Korean fans to proclaim the superiority of Korean baseball. These were bold statements considering Japanese baseball’s long history, extensive domestic infrastructure, number of high school teams, and the size of the professional league (Whiting, 2003). Japanese baseball is evaluated as the best in Asia, and the Japanese professional league has been treated as the second best in the world after MLB. Their celebratory and nationalistic mood, however, caused some Korean MLB fans to underestimate Japanese baseball in general. Some fans suggested that it was time to pop the bubble about the level of Japan’s baseball and its professional league.
Cubs651: I am quite irritated or even disgusted with Japan and Japanese who regard themselves as the best in Asia.
Soon after, the Korean team experienced its first WBC loss in the semifinal, at the hands of Japan, who went on to beat Cuba in the final round and claim the first WBC title. Korean fans were not only disappointed with the result, but also reluctant to recognize the magnitude of what Japan had accomplished. Some fans called Japan a lucky winner, and some even commented that the Japanese team did not deserve the title.
Park61: None of the teams in the event will acknowledge that the Japanese team is the first champion of the WBC. Only the Japanese team and people regard it as the champion. The true champion is the Korean team whose record was 6 wins and 1 loss in the [whole] event.
After the Japanese team was awarded its championship trophy, Korean fans’ complaints deteriorated into expressions of frustration and envy. South Korean fans did not express any satisfaction that even though their national team had lost, an East Asian team had, after all, beaten the world. Their frustration illustrated how deeply their regional sensibilities truly were.
In the 2006 WBC, two Asian teams showed their prowess to baseball fans worldwide: Japan became the first champion and Korea recorded the most wins (six victories and onw defeat). Meanwhile, the US team was eliminated in Round 2 by Japan and Korea. Even many Latin American teams that had many MLB players showed disappointing results. Such an unexpected outcome not only proved that Asians could play high-caliber baseball, but also indicated that the East had emerged as another powerhouse in global sports.
At the same time, Korean MLB fans’ responses to the regional rivalry and Japan are reminders that national sentiments, along with abstract and emotional memories of national history, recur through fans’ ways of enjoying international events. We must take into account that there might be no unity in the East or no common ‘Eastern’ view similar to the increasing lack of unity within Western countries in the process of post-Westernization (Rumford, 2007). The intense and diverse regional consciousness in this case requires us to develop a more nuanced understanding in explicating the globalization of baseball and baseball within East Asia as well.
Baseball and MLB as the field of dreams
As America’s pastime, baseball symbolizes American hegemony, and, according to Bjarkman (2005), baseball (an entertaining spectacle) and professional MLB (a profit-oriented business) are often synonymous. In MLBPARK, Korean fans regarded MLB as a “field of dreams,” and most Koreans were excited when Korean leaguers, i.e. their national players in MLB, succeeded there. Such Korean leaguers are stereotypically “called ‘Worlds Stars’ who have achieved an ‘American Dream’” (Cho, 2008: 91).
At the outset of the WBC, the linkage of MLB with the Superior Other was not only strong but also uncontested in the minds of Korean baseball fans. When the South Korean team beat Taiwan and Japan in the regional round, fans did not hesitate to credit these victories to the presence of Korean leaguers. It was particularly noted that most of the dominating Korean pitchers played in MLB, not KBO. However, this image began to be questioned when the US team lost to Canada 8-6 in the first round. When the Korean team faced the US team in the second round, some fans noted that the Americans were no longer invincible.
Normally, as a matter of sportsmanship as well as national pride, the Korean team would have faced the US team without question. But since its two wins were enough to advance to the semifinal, the general manager of the Korean team insinuated that perhaps a forfeit was in order so that the team might prepare as much as possible for subsequent games. Although this strategy might have been successful, fans objected: “The Korean team should do their best against the U.S. team, the best team in the world, even if we have only a slight chance of winning.” Finally, with Korea’s 7-3 victory over the US, the former invincible sanctity of MLB was shattered, releasing floods of praise on MLBPARK.
Pitcher Love: Before the game, I had expected that the Korean team would be blown out by the U.S. team. I realized how ignorant I am. This game gave me the opportunity to take a new look at Korean baseball. Rose: It is really true that the baseball skills of South Korea have improved a lot. Korean players seemed to have mastered “defense” skill, which is the most basic element of baseball. It is no longer a big surprise that we [the Korean team] beat the U.S.A.
The fans’ excitement with the victory and their identification with the national team illuminated well how transnational sport functions as an important symbol of a global Koreanness, and how “sporting events and sporting images contribute to the making of a global Koreanness” (Joo, 2012: 3). Some fans complained, however, that South Korean commentators had utilized excessively nationalist rhetoric by emphasizing America’s home field advantage and the umpires’ supposedly pro-US bias. These fans were also upset about comments in Korean mass media that downplayed Korea’s brilliant win.
Mauer: The Korean team beat the U.S. team on its own ability. But I am quite irritated with articles and commentators that highlight how the umpires made decisions favorable to the U.S. team. I did not find substantial flaws in the umpiring of the game, and I don’t understand why the mass media always tries to provoke the audience in such a way.
Rather than resorting to nationalist rhetoric, these fans proposed simply enjoying it and honoring the superb performances of the Korean players. The US team’s image of absolute prowess, which also extended to MLB, was further reduced when the US was eliminated from the tournament at the hands of Mexico. This outcome was so shocking that some fans even suggested the hierarchy between American and Korean baseball would be reversed. Although the majority of fans rejected this idea as too simplistic or nationalistic, it did touch upon the community’s tendency to automatically idealize MLB. In the face of Korea’s unexpected victories, fans were quick to problematize this tendency by contending that it was in fact an enforced delusion.
Specialist: I couldn’t believe that many Korean fans still thought of MLB as the field of dreams after witnessing the games. I assumed that such fans had been manipulated by the images and media that praise MLB and its players. I really wish that people could get out of the fantasy around MLB.
Some fans also pointed out that fawning over MLB resulted in an implicit disparagement of the KBO and its players, saying that they had been blinded by the aura of MLB and therefore ignorant about the KBO.
Idea: I thought that some Korean MLB maniacs who ignore the Korean baseball league need to reflect on their thoughts about the KBO. Some American players who are big names in MLB made the same foolish mistake during the game. Kan: After the game [Korea vs. U.S.], I had to reflect why I spent so much time watching MLB. I might subscribe too much to the fantasy around MLB as the field of dreams. MLB is still a league of a foreign country [that includes] competitions among many cities of the U.S. I couldn’t believe how much time and energy I had spent watching their league.
As discussed, images of the US and MLB as the field of dreams were deconstructed to a certain degree with the Korean team winning many games including one against the US during the WBC. Although Korean fans continue to revere Korean leaguers, MLB’s sacred status was questioned and challenged by the comparison to Korean baseball and its players. These reactions show that Korean fans are not simply followers of an American sports league and that their fandom is not merely the result of having absorbed American culture via global media. Just as “cricket is no longer ‘an English mystery’” (Rumford, 2007: 207), this case showed that baseball has become indigenized, nationalized, and even regionalized among Korean fans. At the same time, the fans’ responses reaffirm that “sport national identity is discursively produced, reproduced, and sometimes deconstructed as a result of the globalization juggernaut” (Jun and Lee, 2012: 112). In this sense, Korean fans’ diverse desires and identifications (as Koreans, MLB fans, Korean baseball fans, or simply baseball fans) signal that baseball may be “unsuited to carriage of the project of globalization in its fullest sense” (Rowe, 2003: 281).
Conclusion: baseball and the national-regional-global nexus
Despite its title, the World Baseball Classic was initiated and organized by and large by MLB: MLB tailored the WBC not only to attract MLB fans but also to attract fans of the game itself, as well as sports fans in general, from around the world. MLB’s primary intention was to present this international baseball event as a form of patriot games that would expand its own markets around the world. The decision to drop baseball from the Olympic as well as the organizing process showed that, unlike the case of cricket, the administrative power still remains in the West, specifically the US. However, analysis of Korean MLB fans during the WBC indicates several possibilities and limits of global baseball as a case of post-Westernization.
The rise of East Asian teams as powerful contenders signaled that the WBC is not simply a showcase by and for MLB, and that baseball is no longer a symbol of American hegemony or cultural imperialism. Similar to cricket, the globalization of baseball “consists in the struggle between Asian cricket [baseball] countries (especially India [Japan and Korea]) and the traditional centres for control of the game” (Rumford, 2007: 206). Furthermore, the enthusiasm and various desires among local fans illuminate their development of their own ways of enjoying baseball and the event. As it was originally envisioned, the WBC was meant to localize the global commodity of MLB. The level and intensity of proliferation and spatial reach by a transnational sporting league, however, do not necessarily eradicate nationality or transcend local or national loyalties. In particular, national fandom and regional consciousness played strong roles in orienting their interests to and evaluating the game. Their responses also confirm Rumford’s diagnosis that “post-Westernization involves the recognition that there is no one single global modernity” (2007: 205). In other words, the ways of enjoying baseball in Korea show the multiplicity and flexibility of local fans rather than simply embracing American baseball. As the tournament was prepared and executed, many Korean MLB fans perceived MLB’s strategy of utilizing nationalism as a marketing tool. As a result, many refused to embrace the WBC naively, but instead openly expressed their criticism.
At the same time, the post-Westernization thesis needs to be further elaborated to explicate the diverse and complicated interconnections among the national, the regional, and the global among Korean MLB fans. As a way of adding theoretical nuances, this study suggests understanding local fans’ responses to global baseball as a national-regional-local nexus. The WBC provides a venue in which Korean MLB fans reconstruct a more specific regional triad of “Korea-Japan-US.” Fans accept the traditional model by idealizing MLB or the US as a Superior Other and branding Japan as the Number One Asian baseball power. At the same time, according to the outcome of the event, fans challenge this triad and substitute their own by questioning the image of MLB and the US as the field of dreams, and also by repudiating both the history and the current infrastructure of baseball in Japan. These complex and even contradictory responses show that the national-regional-global nexus is a significant frame within Korean MLB fandom. As they solidify and dispute this interconnection, Korean MLB fans approach and re-imagine their relationship both to their regional counterparts and to global Others.
In turn, these diverse desires and contentions demonstrate that becoming MLB fans in Korea includes having to deal with national sensibilities (expressed as nationalist fervor for MLB), regional sensibilities (in particular, rivalry with Japan and Japanese teams/players), and cosmopolitan sensibilities (global sport fandom). These three sensibilities are uneven, sometimes hierarchal, and always simultaneous. None operates as the default. Instead, Korean MLB fans are required to cope with, negotiate with, and compromise among three different sensibilities: national, regional, and global. The statements and responses of Korean MLB fans in the online community of MLBPARK indicate not only that fans readily perceive the existence of regional and global hierarchies, but also that they routinely contest their own and each other’s perceptions. Moreover, their relationships are both historically constructed and imagined. Their articulations of the national, regional, and global are far from being fixed or unidirectional: they are constantly under construction. To trace and analyze such a national-regional-global nexus contributes both to refining our understanding of various statuses and to expanding modalities of the post-Westernization of global sports in local contexts.
Footnotes
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by Hankuk University of Foreign Studies Research Fund.