Umpiring a concern as Korea beat Hong Kong 10-0 in baseball opener

Baseball

Published: 01 Oct. 2023, 23:02 Updated: 02 Oct. 2023, 20:53

Umpiring a concern as Korea beat Hong Kong 10-0 in baseball opener

Korea's Choi Ji-hoon is called out by the umpire during what appeared to be a miscalled play as Korea took on Hong Kong in their opening game of the baseball tournament at the Hangzhou Asian Games in Hangzhou, China on Sunday. [YONHAP]

Korea started the men’s baseball tournament with a 10-0 win over Hong Kong at the Asian Games on Sunday, picking up a big win ahead of a crucial game against Chinese Taipei on Monday.

Korea opened the scoring early, picking up a run in the first inning and adding two more in the fourth. After a relatively quiet game, Korea finally broke through with seven more runs at the bottom of the eighth to end the game early with a 10-0 lead.

But while the result is a good one — although there wasn’t anything to get particularly excited about against a significantly weaker opponent — the real concern did not come from Korea’s performance, but from the umpire judgements.

Umpiring at international baseball events is often an area of concern, especially under the Asian Games system were umpires are all drawn from different countries — Sunday’s game had umpires from Japan, Chinese Taipei, China and the Philippines — often without sharing a language or being used to a similar level of play.

This was especially evident at the bottom of the third inning where play was held up while umpires and coaches argued over a decision that ultimately appeared to be made incorrectly.

The play started with Kang Baek-ho at bat and runners on first and second with no outs. Kang hit into the left field where a Hong Kong defender made a great dive to catch the ball and threw it in.

Meanwhile, Choi Ji-hoon on second base and Roh Si-hwan on first both started running, with Choi immediately noticing the catch and returning to second before the ball was thrown in. Roh, either moving to fast to stop or without noticing the catch, ran past Choi before stopping to return to first.

The Hong Kong defense threw the ball first to second and then to first and called for a triple play, despite the rules very clearly establishing that Choi was safe because he had already touchec back in, although Roh was out for a double play.

After arguing with each other and the coaches, the umpires finally settled on the baffling conclusion of calling Choi back to first base — where he had been at no point during the play — and then changing that to Noh after admitting they got the players confused. Even that was incorrect, because it was Chou that was safe on second and not Noh on first.

Ultimately the incident had little impact on the game result — the inning ended with a fly out moments later anyway — but it did help to illustrate that umpiring could be a big factor in the coming competition.

Korea return to the field Monday for their second game of the tournament against Chinese Taipei, at 6:30 p.m. in China, or 7:30 p.m. in Korea.

BY JIM BULLEY [jim.bulley@joongang.co.kr]