By Jang Hyun-gu (Reporter) = Seoul will host an official Major League Baseball (MLB) regular season game for the first time ever next year.
The Los Angeles Dodgers and San Diego Padres will play their regular-season opener in Seoul on March 20-21, 2024, the MLB office announced on Wednesday.
This will be the first official MLB game to be played in South Korea, and the two-game series between the Dodgers and Padres will open next year’s regular season, MLB.com reported.
San Diego’s Korean-American slugger Kim Ha-seong will return to his homeland and showcase his skills in front of his hometown fans against the Dodgers, a team with a strong history of Korean players.
The MLB office did not reveal the venue for the series in Seoul, but it is believed that Seoul’s Gocheok Sky Dome, the only dome ballpark in South Korea, will be chosen as the venue due to the cold weather in late March.
An official from the KBO Secretariat said, “The MLB Secretariat has been in talks with us for a long time about holding a regular league in Seoul as part of their ‘World Tour,'” adding, “We understand that MLB officials have visited Gocheok Sky Dome to conduct due diligence on the local environment.”
Under the banner of ‘globalization of baseball,’ the MLB office has been promoting world tours that go beyond the borders of the United States to play regular leagues in other countries in agreement with the MLB players’ union.
Seoul next year will be the ninth time MLB’s official opening game has been held outside the United States, following Monterrey, Mexico in 1999, Tokyo, Japan in 2000-2004, 2008-2012, and 2019, San Juan, Puerto Rico in 2001, and Sydney, Australia in 2014. Seoul will also be the second city on the Asian continent to host an official MLB Opening Day, joining Tokyo.
Notably, the Dodgers will open the season outside of U.S. borders for the second time in 10 years and the first time since 2014, when they opened the regular season against the Arizona Diamondbacks in Sydney.
“I know our players are excited to showcase their skills in South Korea, a country with a rich baseball tradition and talent, including players who have played for the Dodgers such as Chan Ho Park (retired), Hee-seop Choi (current KIA Tigers coach) and Ryu Hyun-jin (current Toronto Blue Jays),” said Dodgers President Stan Castine.
San Diego, which played the first regular-season opener outside the United States in MLB history in 1999 in Monterrey against the Colorado Rockies, will be making its second consecutive world tour following this year’s Mexico series.카지노사이트
“South Korea is a great baseball country with a rich tradition, passionate fans, and talented players, including current San Diego fan favorite Ha-Sung Kim,” said San Diego’s CEO Eric Groupon. “The Padres are proud to join the Dodgers as ambassadors for global baseball in the historic 2024 Seoul Series.”
Following MLB’s announcement, the Dodgers issued a separate press release highlighting the significance of the Series.
The organization noted that four Korean-born players have worn Dodger blue in the past: Park Chan-ho (1994-2001, 2008), Choi Hee-seop (2004-2005), Seo Jae-ng (current KIA Tigers coach-2006), and Ryu Hyun-jin (2013-2019).
He added that Park Chan-ho (2001) and Ryu Hyun-jin (2019) played in the MLB All-Star Game for the Dodgers, while Kim Byung-hyun (2002 – Arizona) and Choo Shin-soo (2018 – Texas Rangers) are the other four Korean big leaguers to play in the All-Star Game.
The MLB office will hold four world tours in 2024, starting with the Seoul Series, followed by the Mexico Series on April 28-29 (Houston Astros-Colorado), the London Series on June 9-10 (New York Mets-Philadelphia Phillies), and the Dominican Republic Series on March 10-11 (Boston Red Sox-Tampa Bay Rays).