After some 6,000 miles in the air -- and another 250 on the road -- SungWoo Lee stepped out into a Arkansas rainstorm. Rain isn't supposed to fall during idyllic trips to faraway places. But summer days in this part of the country are tricky, and a thunderstorm forced crews to pull the tarp over the field at Arvest Ballpark in Springdale.
Never mind that Lee was planning to watch his very first American baseball game that evening, some 20 years after developing an unlikely fandom for the Kansas City Royals from his home in Seoul, South Korea.
The travelers with him today share an obsession with that baseball team, but their love is more conventional. They come from towns such as Lee Summit, Mo. and Overland Park, Kan., towns right in the power alley for abject team fandom. It takes an especially dedicated person to root for a team that has not been to the playoffs in 29 years, the longest current drought in professional sports.
Some blend of affection for the Royals and curiosity directed at Lee brought Keith Westmoreland to Arvest Ballpark on Friday, too. The financial adviser carried three things with him when he met this group of strangers: his daughter, Whitley, decked out in a rainbow-colored Royals hat, a gift bag full of presents for the guest and a lifelong passion for the Royals, the latter of which manifested when he played on a T-ball team of the same name in the mid-1980s. Like the others on the trip, he met Lee through the power of social media. Those connected on Twitter through allegiance to the Royals all know Lee. Watching from his home in Seoul, Lee regularly interacts with fans in the states. He always told them his lifelong dream was to make it to Kauffman Stadium, home of the Royals. Some two years later, he landed on the evening of Aug. 5 and watched the the Royals, away for a game in Arizona, from a sports bar.
Three days later, a caravan of loosely connected friends linking themselves together to show a stranger the best of America brought him to Northwest Arkansas. The rain stopped only a few minutes after the scheduled 4 p.m. start time of his private tour of Arvest. His royal treatment was only beginning.
An Unlikely Fan
Lee discovered the Royals baseball team as a way to work on his English language skills. Among the few English-language programs he could find were baseball games. Why the Royals became his team of choice remains up for discussion. Perhaps it was the idea of the rooting for a loveable loser, but lovable is a hard sell in this case. About 20 years ago, when Lee's love of the Royals was beginning, the American League team was starting a decade-long descent to the bottom of the standings. No Royals season has culminated in a playoff since 1985, making the current 29-year postseason drought the longest in professional sports.
"They are getting better," said Lee, his English always understandable but sometimes halting. "I didn't know it would take such a long time."
Fandom knows very little about practicality. When the Royals play at 7 p.m. Central Time, it's 9 a.m. for Lee. Or if they play a daytime game, it means he would be forced to watch in the middle of the night -- which he does routinely.
But even that takes special effort. Sometimes a local network will pick up a game featuring a South Korean-born player such as Shin-Soo Choo, who previously played for the Royals' division rival, the Cleveland Indians. When those two teams competed, Lee could follow along on a proper television. Mostly, Lee watches from a small computer monitor via a Major League Baseball app that streams live games. He frequently corresponds with like-minded stateside Twitter acquaintances when he does. He actually has a South Korean-based team he follows, the Doosan Bears, based in Seoul. He has only attended two Bears games, despite their relative proximity. Like the girl he can't have, Lee instead chases the Kansas City Royals.
He always promised some of his Internet friends he'd visit someday, but getting enough time away from his job would be a problem. A Royals player named Danny Duffy, at the time a frequent Twitter user as well, offered to buy him plane tickets to America about two years ago. He declined.
This summer, Lee left his job at Samsung to take a role as a retail manager for several duty-free stores in South Korean airports. If the decision to switch jobs had anything to do with giving him the time to visit the Royals, he has not said. But the schedule worked out, so he booked a trip.
And it gave strangers the opportunity to do something very nice.
Becoming Royalty
On Lee's first night in Kansas City, he got to watch the Royals on large televisions at a sports bar and try out that city's preferred hometown adult beverage, Boulevard Beer. To watch the game among friends, no matter how new those friends were, and on a big screen, no less, might have been worth the price of the plane ticket.
People just started showing up at the sports bar to say hello. One Royals fan and soon-to-be friend brought dessert to the sports bar, thus completing the quintessential Americana summer double play of baseball and apple pie.
Royals superfan and blogger Chris Kamler, known to many by his Twitter handle @TheFakeNed, organized many elements of the trip. But he only asked people to show up to things and meet a fellow fan. The gifts and opportunities that came later were all given without prompting, thanks to the power of social media and viral attention. Kamler equated it to kicking a ball down a large hill. Once it got going, it rarely stopped picking up speed.
The Royals themselves invited Lee to throw out the first pitch on Monday evening at Kauffman Stadium. The team also provided him with a behind-the-scenes tour, complete with the opportunity to stick his hand in the grass he'd only seen via television. He got a personalized Royals' jersey with his name on the back and a tour of Boulevard Brewery, too.
On Thursday, he was given another jersey, this time from the Kansas City Chiefs, and outside Arrowhead Stadium, a tailgate attended by more strangers took place before a preseason game there.
On Friday, he got a whirlwind, baseball-centric tour of Northwest Arkansas.
A Field Day
His time in Northwest Arkansas spanned the course of a day, and it of course centered around baseball and the Northwest Arkansas Naturals, a minor league affiliate of Lee's beloved Royals. But it came blanketed in Southern hospitality. Leaving Kansas City that Friday morning, strangers at a gas station on the way out of town begged him for a picture. He obliged, like he did for every similar request during his trip. If the jet leg or nonstop media schedule -- his story made ESPN's "Sportscenter," NPR's "All Things Considered" and an English-language paper in Korea -- ever made him tired, he never showed it, at least not while in Arkansas.
There was a cheer among his entourage of about 10 people -- most unknown to each other hours before -- when word arrived that the tarp would come off the field and the tour could begin. The rain that greeted him upon his arrival had passed.
Team special events coordinator Adam Wright and public relations manager Dustin Dethlefs led the tour, taking the entourage first for a loop around the concourse before taking Lee to the field for batting practice, where he watched the players hit alongside scouts doing the same. He conversed with several members of the Naturals' staff, including play-by-play announcer Benjamin Kelly. Upon sight of Mitch Maier, a former major leaguer and Royals player now working his way back to the big show, Lee wrapped his arms around him. The crew then proceeded to the locker room, a rare treat on any day but one that's particularly exclusive on a game day hours before the main event.
About one minute into the tour, he crew turned around. Naturals manager Vance Wilson would have none of it.
"That's not how you do a tour," he said. He pushed Lee into the center of the locker room, then encouraged his players to greet him.
"He traveled a long way to see you," Wilson said matter-of-factly.
A Korean man and a Latin American ballplayer then conversed about baseball, a universal language. Lee knew most of their names at first sight, particularly Hunter Dozier, a prospect who projects well for the major league organization. Lee doesn't just follow the major league teams; he knows the minor league rosters by heart, too.
Wilson signed an official lineup card for Lee and sent him along for the rest of the tour.
Food & Phonetics
What do you impart to someone who has never been to this part of the country before, someone who likely will never return? In Northwest Arkansas, the answer is a conversation about the difference between "y'all" and "you'uns" and a quick course in how to execute the Hog call. There's also a lesson about the Thunder Chickens, a title the Naturals were almost saddled with after a public contest designed to pick a name. About two years ago, Lee owned one Royals' hat. A care package from Kamler and fellow Kansas Citian Dave Darby, also on the journey to Arkansas, gave him a few more. Everyone joked that Lee would need a second suitcase to bring home all of his new swag. That was before he was given a Thunder Chickens T-shirt by Sarah Sparkman, assistant city attorney in Springdale and one of those Lee regularly conversed with on Twitter over the years.
Lee also ate well, and the Naturals staff gave him their signature but bizarre concession item, a funnel dog. He was warned of it before the game, and as a way out, and a way to joke, he told his roughly 10,000 or so followers on Twitter that while some of his countrymen might, he doesn't eat anything with dog in the title.
In reality, Lee complained only that the funnel dog -- like a corn dog, but with funnel cake batter and powdered sugar instead of corn breading on the outside -- was too big. For a Korean man, he said he eats more than most, though his slender frame doesn't show it. Compared to an American, he insisted, he eats almost nothing. He ate the whole funnel dog, though.
And he also was forced to try some barbecue pulled pork nachos and a beer from Springdale-based Core Brewing & Distilling Company. The flavor was excellent, he said.
Game Theory
His entrance to the game was the same as the one enjoyed by the team's two mascots, Strike the Sasquatch and Sinker the Lake Creature. They all rode in standing in the bed of a truck.
Lee rarely kept the seat he was given. He started on the first base side of the stadium, flanked on all sides by Royals fans, with the exception of one seat reserved for the personalized cake Sparkman bought for him at Shelby Lynn's Cake Shoppe. Lee's seat placed him as close as it could to Maier, a veteran of the game and therefore tasked with coaching first base. In the sixth inning, Lee participated as on-field entertainment, jumping inside a see-through vinyl sphere to become a human bowling ball. He knocked down all six pens.
The crew talked about startlingly normal things, such as which condiment to cheer for in the condiment race. Lee kept losing the ball in the sky. He's accustomed to watching on television, where professional cameramen train on the ball. In person, he found he wasn't quite as skilled, or maybe just out of practice. In the seventh inning, he claimed front row seats right behind home plate to watch the proceedings up close. Lee's Royals team had not yet lost while he was in the states, but the Naturals were all tied up going into the ninth inning. From the front row, he and Darby waited through the 10th inning, then the 11th, then onward. The Naturals, dressed in hot pink uniforms in the name of raising money for cancer research, could not score a run.
Kelly, the voice of the Naturals, pondered out loud on the radio. If this was someone's first American baseball game, and it took four hours and a half hours before it was completed, and the team you were rooting for lost, as the Naturals eventually did in 14 innings, would you change your mind about the sport?
Immediately after the conclusion of the game, Lee already knew his answer. Someone in his group bought him one of the game-worn pink jerseys, which were being offered in a silent auction. Standing at midfield with a ballplayer he'd read about for years, Lee beamed.
The entourage, slowed by the late-running ballgame, didn't make it back to Kansas City until just before 4 a.m. Lee attended his first Royals baseball game that Saturday evening. The team won.
The Royals, winning the first time he ever watched them live, scored the first run just moments after they flashed Lee's photo on the stadium jumbotron.
Because sometimes idyllic trips to faraway places are even more unbelievable than planned.
NAN Our Town on 08/14/2014