Major League Baseball and the Major League Baseball Players Association announced Friday morning that Major League Baseball players will travel to South Korea in November for a four-game exhibition series featuring players from the Korean Baseball Organization. The ‘Korea Series 2022’ will take place from November 9-16 and will feature two sets of matches at Sajik Baseball Stadium in Busan (home of KBO’s Lotte Giants team) and at Seoul’s Gocheok Sky Dome (home of KBO’s Kiwoom Champions). The four-game series is part of MLB’s new “MLB World Tour” initiative to expand the game’s global presence and celebrate KBO’s 40th anniversary.
“Major League Baseball is excited to travel to Busan and Seoul for this historic series,” MLB Chief Operations and Strategy Chris Marinac said in a statement in a press release this morning. “This tour is the next step in MLB’s plan to offer regular baseball events in Korea in the coming years and follows our upcoming Home Run Derby X, scheduled for September 17th.The tenth in Seoul. South Korea’s rich baseball tradition has produced many Premier League players, including All-Stars chan ho park And the Shin Soo Chuas well as the current Blue Jays pitcher hyun jin ryu And Rice is the first baseman Ji Man Choi. We thank J-One and KBO for partnering with us and the MLBPA in this wonderful event.”
As the MLB edition points out, it would be the first time major league players had traveled to play games in South Korea a century ago, when a group including Casey Stingel, Witt Hoyt and Herb Pinnock, among others, made the trip back in 1922.
As part of the MLB World Tour, the MLB and MLBPA have agreed to host up to 24 regular season games and 16 show competitions between Asia, Europe, Latin America and Mexico through 2026. KBO news release (hat tip: Ji Ho Yoo from South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency) indicates that KBO Commissioner Koo-Youn Heo and MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred also discussed back in June the possibility of KBO regular season matches being played in the United States and MLB regular season matches being played in South Korea.
The MLB and MLBPA have yet to announce the list of participants who will be traveling to South Korea for the event. The KBO release indicates that more details regarding the schedule, matches, ticket sales and participants on the MLB and KBO side of the event will be announced at a press conference in September.
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