In the United States, many Major League Baseball games feature long periods of calm, punctuated by cheers when there is action on the field or when the stadium organ plays a catchy tune.

But in South Korea, a baseball game is a sustained sensory overload. Each player has a fight song, and cheering squads – including drummers and dancers standing on platforms near the dugouts facing the spectators – keep the chants going on almost constantly. Imagine being in a ballpark where every player, even a newcomer, gets the star treatment.

“You have to get ready to scream,” said Kim Seongjun, 26, a fan who attended an exhibition game in Seoul this weekend. “It’s fun to stand up and cheer.”

Also the food is on another level. Think of the ballpark as a giant buffet of Korean street food.

This is all in store for the Los Angeles Dodgers and San Diego Padres when they open the MLB season in Seoul this week. Here’s a guide for visiting fans.

When you enter a South Korean baseball field, you are encouraged to stand up and participate in cheering routines almost constantly, from the first pitch to the last. Fans typically watch their respective team cheer and repeat the chants, songs and dances performed by the cheerleaders, drummers and their leader, the ‘cheer master’.

The Korea Baseball Organization professionalized cheering teams in the early 2000s, partly to attract new fans. That has helped make ballparks inviting spaces in a country where many people work long hours and face enormous societal pressures.

“Our huge cheer culture is one of the reasons why baseball is such a popular sport here,” said Jung Jihoon, 22, who led the drum section at the Padres’ exhibition game on Sunday as they defeated South Korea’s national team 1- 0 defeated.

“It’s fun to lose yourself in the atmosphere,” Jung said, sitting with his drumsticks and bass drum in front of the door where the Padres’ cheerleaders were dancing.

To fully immerse yourself, follow the cheermaster’s directions. Cheermasters write fight songs and chants, among other things, and shout them during games, even when their teams are losing badly.

When the Kiwoom Heroes played the Dodgers on Sunday, Kim Jung-suk, 39, the South Korean club’s cheermaster, shouted, “Home run ball!” Home run ball!” Fans echoed that as they rhythmically smashed empty plastic bottles and toy baseball bats together.

Whenever a batter hit the ball, the crack of his bat turned the chant into a roar.

“In terms of the game, anyone could be interested in the Dodgers,” Kim said of the game, which featured the American team defeated his team 14-3. “But in terms of cheering, the Kiwoom Heroes are not left behind.”

Learn the fighting songs

Custom fight songs are played when a player enters the board. They usually contain the player’s name and a short melody.

Local fans can sing them by heart.

Kim Soowon, 38, who attended the Heroes game with her husband and children, said the team’s songs were so easy to learn that even her two-year-old twins knew them.

“Here, baseball games are a great place for office workers to come and scream after work,” she said.

For this week’s games, cheermasters spent weeks creating each MLB player’s fight song, adapted from commonly recognized melodies used by South Korean teams.

Fight songs are sung when a player steps up to the plate. Then, while taking on the opposing pitcher, the cheermaster leads chants calling for hits — or, if the team is down, a home run to turn the game around.

“Ohtani infield! Ohtani infield!” fans sang in Korean as beloved Dodger Shohei Ohtani batted during Sunday’s exhibition game. He struck out twice.

Every song has a dance. Don’t worry if you don’t know the moves. Each team has a group of cheerleaders who demonstrate them.

“I love the energy we send and receive as the fans follow our movements,” said Kim Hana, 25, a Heroes cheerleader. “We help you learn all the dances.”

The cheering, dancing and autograph signings have attracted young fans to baseball who might otherwise find the sport boring. “In the age of YouTube and TikTok, it’s hard to sit through a three-hour game,” said Barney Yoo, director of international operations at KBO.

The rituals also strengthen the bond between the teams and their devoted audiences, Bae Soohyun, 39, a cheerleader for South Korea’s national team, said Sunday.

“It’s a baseball experience that only South Korea can offer,” she said.

Eat something new

Baseball here can be a complete dining experience with Korean staples such as fried spicy rice cakes, stewed pork feet and ‘chimaek’, Korean slang for the combination of fried chicken and beer. Many fans carry multi-course meals to their seats, and some stadiums have barbecue areas for those who want to grill out.

Each South Korean ballpark also serves its own special dishes. Jamsil Baseball Stadium in Seoul is known for its spicy noodles in kimchi broth. In Suwon, south of the capital, fans rave about the dumplings and fried whole chicken.

And at Gocheok Sky Dome, where the MLB season openers are played, hundreds of people line up for crispy fried shrimp covered in a mayonnaise-based sauce. If you’re not afraid of spice, consider the “mala” sauce version for a tingly touch.

Stay until the end

There was some concern among officials scheduling this week’s games that all the singing might bother non-Korean players. But the weekend’s practice matches were more subdued than a usual Korean match. That may be because fans weren’t fervently looking for a particular outcome.

After the Dodgers played Sunday, the team’s manager, Dave Roberts, told reporters that his players had not found the cheering distracting. On the contrary.

“The environment and atmosphere were great,” he said.

One aspect of Korean fan culture will be comforting to the losers in the MLB games. While American fans may dejectedly leave early if their team seems too far behind to win, fans here typically stay until the final out.

For the first time, women will don Major League Baseball jerseys in MLB The Show, the long-running hit video game.

MLB The Show 24 introduces the ability to create and play as a female player in a reinvented version of the game’s career mode, Road to the Show, in which gamers follow the ascension of a custom character from the minors to the major leagues to steer. The game’s developer, Sony San Diego Studio, announced the new mode Tuesday.

The game, which will be released on March 19, calls the new career mode Road to the Show: Women Pave Their Way. It features a storyline that follows the rise of two women in the big leagues and delves into the unique challenges they face, according to Sony San Diego Studio.

MLB The Show joins other high-profile sports video game franchises that have transitioned to women, such as FIFA (now EA Sports FC) And NBA2K. But the gender dynamics in baseball are much more complicated, because most women and girls play softball.

Some hoped MLB The Show 24 would change that.

“I think especially in the United States, we’ve been brainwashed into thinking that boys play baseball and girls play softball, when in reality both exist in both worlds,” said Veronica Alvarez, manager of the USA Baseball Women’s National Team, which is competing this year Women’s Baseball World Cup.

Ms. Alvarez, herself a former national team player, and some of her players provided Sony input into the game’s development.

Women playing baseball isn’t exactly new: Toni Stone is credited with being the first woman to play alongside men in the Negro Leagues, and women’s baseball leagues have come and gone in the United States over the years. The movie “A League of Their Own” popularized a women’s professional league that emerged during World War II.

Despite societal expectations to pursue softball, women are staking a greater claim in the male-dominated sport of baseball.

There are no women in the major leagues, but a growing number of girls are playing the sport, whether or not alongside boys totally girl ploughing. A few even went on to play on men’s teams in college.

Some, like Ms. Alvarez, have found a career in… Coaching minor league teams. In 2020, Kim Ng became the first general manager of a Major League team.

The Atlantic League, an independent minor league affiliated with Major League Baseball, recently welcomed its first female player, Kelsie Whitmore, a 25-year-old pitcher. Her personal story is used in Road to the Show: Women Paving Their Way.

“It’s becoming more and more common for women to get further and further into the sport,” says 20-year-old Olivia Pichardo, who last year the first woman to play NCAA Division I college baseball.

Ms. Pichardo, who grew up playing MLB The Show and shared her personal experiences with the developers, hoped it would give young girls the opportunity to see baseball as a viable option.

Lisa Fernandez, a UCLA coach and softball pitcher whose three gold medals earned her a place in the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Hall of Fame, said the representation of women in a baseball video game showed how far they had come since Title IX opened the doors to them in college sports in 1972.

“I think it just makes a statement,” Ms. Fernandez said, although she noted that women still have a long way to go to have the same professional opportunities as men, whether they play baseball, softball or another sport.

Ms. Alvarez, 40, said the Colorado Silver Bullets, an all-female professional team that briefly competed against men in the 1990s, was the only example of women in baseball she could remember from her childhood.

“I saw one game on TV, and that was the only representation I ever saw growing up of a girl or woman playing baseball, other than me of course and the only girl in Little League that I played in,” said madam. Alvarez said.

She didn’t know there was a women’s national team until she was an adult, when it happened to pop up after she searched Google for the Silver Bullets. “And that brought me to USA Baseball, which meant I got to play eight more years and extend my career,” Ms. Alvarez said, adding, “It shows you how important it is to see someone who looks like you do.”

A more inclusive video game can have that kind of power too.

Jillian Albayati, 19, a baseball pitcher and national team member, said MLB The Show was wildly popular among young players. It’s one of the few video games she’s played, she said.

“It shows me how far I can really go,” Ms. Albayati said, imagining her thoughts if she had seen women in the game as a child. “It gives me even bigger dreams that I already have.

“It makes me believe they can become a reality.”

Months after Steve Garvey joined the race for the Senate seat formerly occupied by Dianne Feinstein, California voters were only vaguely aware that he was running. The former Major League Baseball star, a Republican long shot in a deeply Democratic state, appeared to be courting tens of millions of Californians in stealth mode: little press. Vague points of view. No ads to talk about.

Then Representative Adam B. Schiff intervened.

On Tuesday, after a series of campaign ads that essentially allowed Schiff to pick his opponent in the general election, voters in California’s primary put the 75-year-old Garvey in a November runoff for a prized Senate seat that represents the state’s most populous represented the country. He will face Mr. Schiff, 63, a Los Angeles-area Democrat who has raised more than $30 million and has been the front-runner for months.

Mr. Schiff is a 12-term congressman who led the prosecution in the first impeachment trial of former President Donald J. Trump. Mr. Garvey is a career .294 hitter with 272 home runs and 1,308 runs batted in during 19 seasons with the Los Angeles Dodgers and San Diego Padres in the 1970s and 1980s.

Mr. Garvey was known as a clean-cut role model in his heyday in the sport and has since cemented his reputation by appearing in infomercials, giving motivational speeches and recording $149 Cameo Greetings. He has long expressed a desire to run for public office, despite the hurdle of some highly publicized marital, financial and legal problems in his past.

He was late to the Senate race, announcing his candidacy in October, long after Mr. Schiff had begun campaigning and won the support of the state’s Democratic establishment, including the backing of Nancy Pelosi, the former Speaker of the House. the House of Representatives. By then, the conventional wisdom was that the primaries would result in Schiff facing another Democrat in the November general election — either Rep. Katie Porter or Rep. Barbara Lee — to fill the office that Ms. Feinstein held for more than thirty held for years.

In California, registered Democrats outnumber registered Republicans 2 to 1, and voters have not elected a Republican in a statewide race since Arnold Schwarzenegger was re-elected governor in 2006. But Republican Party leaders were eager to field a big-name candidate at the top of the ticket. anyway, to mobilize and help the state’s conservative minority in some competitive down-ballot elections.

Mr. Schiff, meanwhile, faced the prospect of a formidable Democratic opponent in the general election if Ms. Porter were to reach the California primary, in which the top two voters advance to the general election regardless of the circumstances. party. For the Schiff campaign, Mr. Garvey was someone who could rally enough Republicans to knock Ms. Porter out of second place in the primaries.

So Mr. Schiff and his allies — including labor unions, Native American tribes and tech executives — unleashed tens of millions of dollars in ads portraying Mr. Garvey as the conservative choice and an acolyte of former President Donald J. Trump. The ads were a way to signal to the state’s Republican voters — almost all of whom are conservative — that Garvey was their candidate.

The maneuver worked. In a race with nearly 20 candidates in total, the three veteran Democrats split most of the votes among them on the left, while Mr. Garvey had the votes on the right mostly to himself. Ms Porter came third overall, putting her out of the race; Ms Lee ran a distant fourth.

“Schiff executed a perfect strategy,” said Rob Stutzman, a Republican political strategist from California. “He took advantage of his large war chest to elevate himself in the second round against an opponent who cannot compete with him in November.”

Mr. Stutzman acknowledged that the math of party registration alone makes Mr. Garvey’s chances of victory in November very slim. Moreover, he said, Garvey’s reliance on bare-bones talking points has fueled questions about his willingness to rise to power.

“But he has a wonderful opportunity to prove the doubters and naysayers wrong — to come out and adopt a specific issue platform,” Mr. Stutzman said.

Mr. Garvey is not the first California candidate to rely less on political experience than on celebrity. Ronald Reagan was a Hollywood actor before rising to the governor’s office and then to the White House. Before Mr. Schwarzenegger became governor in the 2003 recall election, he was an A-list movie star.

Both men spent long hours teaching state policy before running for office, said Dan Schnur, who teaches political communications at the University of Southern California and the University of California, Berkeley. Mr. Reagan was president of the Screen Actors Guild and, as a labor leader, was familiar with state institutions. And in 2003, Mr. Schwarzenegger received a much-publicized series of tutorials on governance from policy experts at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution — a crash course he dubbed “Schwarzenegger University.”

Both men led the state in a less partisan era, when Republicans made up a larger share of California’s electorate than they do today. When Mr. Schwarzenegger was re-elected in 2006, it was partly because he had moved to the middle of the political spectrum after losing an embarrassing battle with the unions in his first term. And in those days, a single gaffe was far less likely to destroy a candidate’s political aspirations than it is in today’s social media age.

Mr Garvey, sensing the risk, has reduced his policy proposals to broad strokes. On homelessness, he said he plans to “find out what works and what doesn’t by auditing the money spent on this crisis.” On the Middle East, he has said he prefers Israel “yesterday, today and tomorrow.”

He has said he does not condone abortion but would not support a national ban because “Californians have spoken.” He is not in favor of a further increase in the minimum wage.

His availability to the news media is carefully controlled and rationed, with interviews limited almost exclusively to local television stations and friendly conservative media. He appeared at three debates and was the only candidate to leave afterward without speaking to reporters. During the first televised debate in January with Mr. Schiff and the other top Senate candidates, the moderators were so frustrated by Mr. Garvey’s lack of policy talk. that at one point one of them pointedly asked why he was running, given his rudimentary positions.

Mr Garvey responded that “policy for me is a position – I have taken strong positions,” and then recited a list of conservative slogans, such as “let’s get back to energy,” “let’s close the border” and “let’s finance money’. the police.” Later, when Representatives Schiff, Lee and Porter asked whether he would vote for Trump for president this year, as he had done in the past two elections, Mr. Garvey squirmed and would not answer.

Reviews were scathing.

“Describing Garvey’s actions as a deer in the headlights is a disservice to the real deer in the headlights,” wrote Jack Ohman, columnist and political cartoonist for The San Francisco Chronicle.

Campaign experts said this week that it was not unusual for a political novice to tread carefully on policy issues. Mr. Garvey did not have much experience, they added, because Mr. Schiff’s advertising strategy had made it unnecessary for him to campaign.

“Until now he has been in ‘do no harm’ mode,” said Mr. Stutzman, a top adviser to Mr. Schwarzenegger during the 2003 recall campaign. He said that if Mr. Garvey hopes to be taken seriously, he will have to reach beyond conservative Californians without alienating them and “demonstrate that he understands the issues.”

“There is a lot of specificity in things like the history of NATO and the obligations of the treaty,” he said. ‘On immigration. For foreign policy.”

On the first evening, Mr. Garvey made light of it with fans at a resort near his Palm Desert ranch, “Casa de Garvey,” and his live-streamed speech was full of baseball analogies and nostalgia.

“Welcome to the California comeback,” he shouted to the crowd at the JW Marriott Desert Springs Resort & Spa in Palm Springs, borrowing one of Mr. Schwarzenegger’s old slogans. “What you feel tonight is what it feels like to hit a walk-off home run.”

He invited the public in person and online to join his campaign if they were concerned about gas prices, urban crime and “career politicians who are more concerned about their next job in Washington than your next job here in California.” ‘

“They say we will strike at the general election,” he said. He then channeled another baseball great, Yogi Berra.

“It’s not over until it’s over,” he exulted.

The crowd roared.

In the crowded race to succeed the late California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, Steve Garvey stands out for his celebrity and how little he has actually campaigned.

On community forums, the former baseball star turned pitchman has been a regular no-show. After television debates, he fled from reporters who were waiting in the spin room. The 75-year-old Republican, a political novice, has raised only a fraction of the tens of millions of dollars needed to win a statewide race in California.

But with just two weeks to go until the March 5 primary, Garvey is poised to win one of two spots in the November runoff, despite facing three veteran Democratic members of Congress and a large number of other contenders.

While Rep. Adam Schiff has widened his overall lead, polls indicate Mr. Garvey could beat Rep. Katie Porter for second place in California's unusual “jungle” election.

In a state so large that 22 million voters participated in the last presidential election, name recognition can still overcome political inexperience and a lack of money. Even though that name was largely made by baseball four decades ago.

And in a strategic move that has become common in California, Mr. Schiff may have done more to help Mr. Garvey than Mr. Garvey himself. The leading Democrat has spent $10 million on ads that ostensibly attack Mr. Garvey as “too conservative for California” but are likely to have the effect of turning a critical mass of Republican voters to his side. The result was an unlikely upset in a contest expected to be dominated by two Democratic members of Congress.

Now, Mr. Garvey has become a candidate to watch, despite his party representing less than a quarter of California's electorate and him having little to no chance of winning a statewide general election. With that success has come research.

News articles have highlighted the scandal-laden years following the end of Mr. Garvey resurrected with the Los Angeles Dodgers and the San Diego Padres; Californians are reliving the bitter divorce and multiple romances in the late 1980s that made him the punchline of T-shirts and bumper stickers. (“Honk if You're Carrying Steve Garvey's Baby” was once a California favorite.) This month, three of his seven children their alienation described in detail from him to The Los Angeles Times.

On a recent Saturday, days after voters began receiving their ballots, Mr. Schiff laid siege to the Super Bowl weekend airways while two other candidates, Ms. Porter and Representative Barbara Lee, stumbled across Lunar New Year festivals and chatted with young black Democrats. in Los Angeles County.

Mr. Garvey has been home mostly after appearing at a local charity bicycle race near his ranch in Palm Desert. As he checked his mail in slacks and a sweater outside “Casa de Garvey,” where a large red, white and blue banner reading “Steve Garvey for U.S. Senate” flew from the wrought-iron gate, he looked with a smile and a rueful shrug that he was involved in “arguably the toughest race in America.”

Then he walked back up the driveway and answered a follow-up question.

How did the campaign go? “Awesome!”

It is not clear what convinced Mr. Garvey to leave his post-baseball life as a celebrity pitcher behind and run for Senate. So far he has resisted calls for detailed policy positions and said he will study the issues further if he makes it through the primaries. A media tour consisted mainly of visits to homeless camps and the California-Mexico border, and lasted about two days.

Mr Garvey has said he was approached early last year and became convinced he could improve civil discourse. “I never played for Democrats, Republicans or independents,” he says said in a video when he launched his campaign. “I played for all of you.”

Jessica Millan Patterson, chair of the Republican Party of California, said in a statement that “his potential promotion to the general election would not only serve as a boost to all Republicans on the November ballot, but also give California Republicans their best chance would give in years to choose to win a Senate seat.”

During the most recent televised debate, held last week in San Francisco, Mr. Garvey appeared slightly better prepared than he did for the first televised confrontation last month.

He advocated closing the U.S.-Mexico border, opposed further minimum wage increases and reiterated his support for Israel over Hamas “yesterday, today and tomorrow.” But after blaming state laws for driving up California's housing costs, he couldn't point to any regulations or say exactly what he would change.

“He's not ready for prime time yet,” said Mike Madrid, a longtime Republican strategist who suggested that Mr. Garvey was lured into the race by advisers and party leaders. “This is just an attempt to get someone with name recognition to carry the Republican flag across the field under heavy machine gun fire, and everyone knows it.”

If Mr. Garvey survives until November, Mrs. Porter may have the biggest complaint.

For months, political pundits believed a November runoff between Mr. Schiff and Ms. Porter was the most likely outcome. Ms. Lee of Oakland is beloved by progressive Democrats, but she has raised less money and consistently ranks fourth in the polls.

California's unusual “jungle” election system, adopted by voters in 2010 to address party gridlock, throws all candidates into one primary and then sends the top two candidates to a runoff in November, regardless of side. Since then, California has twice had two Democrats — and no Republicans — in the November general election for the Senate.

Mr. Schiff, 63, was the impeachment manager during former President Donald J. Trump's first trial and was endorsed by former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Ms. Porter, 50, a former law professor, has gained national fame for her combative comments in Congress against Trump administration officials and Wall Street financiers.

If Ms. Porter were to get past the primary, she could have a better chance in the general election against Mr. Schiff in November. Although she is a liberal, she has appealed to enough crossover voters in the past to represent a battleground in Orange County. Women, including those who support Ms. Lee, could flock to her, while Republicans could push Mr. Schiff's impeachment charges against him.

If Republicans see Mr. Garvey as a celebrity who can boost turnout, Mr. Schiff may see a perfect foil. If he were to face Mr Garvey in the general election, he would be virtually assured of a victory, given how democratic and polarized the state is. So it was no surprise that Mr. Schiff ran ads that raised the Republican's profile.

It's a gamble that Democratic front-runners have increasingly deployed as their majority in California has grown: Consolidate the state's conservatives behind one Republican in the primaries and then race to victory in the runoff.

Mr. Schiff says the spots merely contrast the leading candidates of both parties. But Ms. Porter and other critics call the move cynical and undemocratic.

“I think voters should choose the candidates,” Ms. Porter said. “Not the other way around.” (Ms. Porter fought fire with fire, recently purchasing online ads of her own trying to convince California conservatives that a lesser-known Republican on the ballot, Eric Early, was “the real Republican threat.”)

Campaign finance reports showed that Mr. Garvey had done so approximately $600,000 raised by the end of December, largely from Republican retirees in Southern California, and had spent more than $100,000 on consulting services.

By comparison, Mr. Schiff had raised more than $35 million, Ms. Porter more than $13.2 million and Ms. Lee more than $1 million.

More extensive research has already exposed Mr. Garvey's family situation.

“Happy birthday 6! I love you so much,” Olivia Garvey, one of his three children with his current wife, Candace Garvey, posted on X in December, and called him by his baseball uniform number. Tribute to his long marriage adorn his social media feeds.

Less visible are the two daughters Mr. Garvey had with his first wife and the two children he had in 1989 with other romantic partners. A daughter from his first marriage, Krisha Garvey, now 49 and based in Los Angeles, said in an interview that Mr. Garvey abruptly cut ties with her 15 years ago and only reconnected last fall, letting her know that he started a Senate. campaign.

A statement said the two children born in 1989 to women Mr. Garvey was involved with at the time – Slade Mendenhall, 34, who lives in Atlanta; and Ashleigh Young, 35, who lives in Japan, said they “couldn't comment on a personal acquaintance with Steve Garvey as we don't have one.”

“In our childhood,” they wrote, “several attempts were made through lawyers to arrange a meeting or even a phone call with Mr. Garvey, but he declined every opportunity.”

On his street, where Garvey's flag was the only political sign, neighbors from both parties described him as down-to-earth and friendly and doubted his family problems would sway voters.

“America is a very forgiving country,” said Gus Shouse, 58, an electrical contractor and fellow Republican who lives down the street and has done some work for the Garveys. “We all fail. We all fall.”

“He's very nice, she's very nice, but we're Democrats — we're not going to vote for him,” said Brian Blatchley, 67, a retired event planner who was out with his husband, Fredy Gerber, 68. , a retired sommelier . They had voted for Mrs. Porter, they said.

Mr. Garvey's communications adviser, Matt Shupe, declined to make him available for further comment, saying that The New York Times had “crossed a line” by making an impromptu conversation in Mr. Garvey's mailbox.

In his statement to the Los Angeles Times, Mr. Garvey said that “the challenges I faced after retiring from Major League Baseball 40 years ago were critical in shaping the person I am,” and that 35 years of marriage “my growth and commitment to family values.”

Political analysts suggest Mr Garvey will face bigger concerns if he makes it to the general election.

“Garvey has three strikes against him,” said David Townsend, a Sacramento-based Democratic campaign consultant. “First of all, he's a Republican in California. Two: he has no money. And third, he was a Dodger. Which means he's hated by the entire San Francisco Giants half of the state.”