From Phillies fan to Korean Baseball expert
For a baseball-starved population in the United States, Korean Baseball Organization games on ESPN’s platforms have been a salve in trying times. And chances are, if you’ve caught a KBO game and gone online to learn more about what you’re seeing, you can likely thank a Phillies fan for the info you found.
For the last 20 years, Dan Kurtz has documented baseball in South Korea. His website, MyKBO. net (tagline: “Where Korean baseball and English meet”) is one of the few English-language sources on the KBO. Kurtz has become a go-to guest on ESPN broadcasts to translate Korean baseball’s intricacies to an American audience, and he’s been profiled by NPR and other major news outlets.
His love of baseball traces back to growing up a Phillies fan in Berks and Lancaster counties.
The idea of Korean baseball would’ve seemed distant to Kurtz when he lived on a farm in New Holland. Born in South Korea and adopted before his first birthday, the Phillies provided Kurtz with his formative baseball memories, from scampering around flea markets to buy baseball cards to the heartbreak rendered by Joe Carter in the 1993 World Series when Kurtz was 13. He looked forward to when the big-league club would visit the Reading Phillies for an exhibition tune-up, a chance to load up on player signatures.
Kurtz tried to get his baseball fix however he could, from newspapers to what few games came through on his family’s pre-cable broadcast airwaves.
“My family, they’re not hardcore sports fans at all,” Kurtz said. “When the newspaper would come, I would grab the sports sections. Growing up, we didn’t have cable TV. We lived on a farm. I’d watch broadcast TV and try to watch any games that was on broadcast, so I watched a lot of Phillies games.”
Kurtz’s baseball love was cemented early. He idolized Mike Schmidt, donning a stadium-giveaway plastic helmet and imagining himself as the Hall of Fame third baseman while playing in the yard. He watched many members of the 1993 team rise through the ranks at Reading and developed an affinity for that team, even latching on to obscure members like, as he shared on a podcast, Tony Longmire. He still rues not going to the Vet during the 1993 World Series, right down to the disappointment of missing Tag Team perform the Phillies theme song, “Whoomp There It Is.”
“The Phillies had a lottery for the World Series tickets,” Kurtz said. “There was no Internet in that day, so you had to send in postcards, and I remember sending in as many postcards as I could. And I got picked, and I remember I couldn’t go, but my older sister got the tickets and she took her friend and I was so jealous and so upset.”
Kurtz found another object for his baseball affections at age 20. He returned to South Korea at 19 on a trip with other adoptees and decided to study abroad the next year at Yonsei University, while getting his degree at Millersville University. His first game, watching the Doosan Bears play at Jamsil Stadium, was a revelation.
Far from the sedate atmosphere of the Vet in the late 1990s and the stodgy traditionalism of America’s pastime, the Korean version is a joyous celebration. Cheermasters patrol the stands with squads of dancers, choreographed routines and personalized hype songs. The bat flip, regarded as showboating in America likely to attract a fastball to the ribs, is an expression of zeal for the Korean game.
“It was insane to me because of how loud it was, how raucous,” Kurtz said. “I describe it as like there’s a rock concert going on in the stands and a baseball game going on on the field.”
When Kurtz went online for more info about the league, he found precious few English resources. That encouraged him to both increase his Korean studies, which he still admits are lacking, and inspired him to share the gospel of the KBO in English. Thus, MyKBO.net was born, first as a message board for fans (especially Koreans abroad), then as more of a blog and a statistical resource.
It rocketed into the mainstream on May 5, the opening day to the KBO season, one of the first global sports leagues to return from the coronavirus pandemic. Kurtz, now a stay-at-home dad to three children in Tacoma, Washington, saw traffic to his website increase 27-fold from opening day the previous year. And that’s before the site went offline briefly. His Twitter account, @MyKBO, has grown from around 6,000 followers to just shy of 20,000. Kurtz started a GoFundMe to cover operating expenses for the season, which quickly hit its modest goal of $3,600.
“To me, it has been overwhelming, a dream come true,” Kurtz said. “I’m still pinching myself that, 1) there’s games being shown in English on ESPN, and 2) that there are fans that have been so desperate for live sports that they are watching the KBO and they have latched on to teams, whether it’s because they’re passionate baseball fans, they like live sports, they’re fantasy sports players or they simply like a mascot. They’ve latched on overwhelmingly online and social media.”
His Philly fandom hasn’t diminished as his Korean interests have blossomed. Kurtz lived in Philadelphia from 2006-10 while his wife studied at Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine. He couldn’t attend the Phillies championships parade in 2008 due to work obligations while commuting to Lancaster. But he shared in his city’s celebration — and the mad dash for merchandise — around that world title. It was a bonus that the Phillies picked up Chan-ho Park, the first Korean to play in MLB and a beloved legend in his home country, for the 2009 season, and Kurtz gleefully bought a No. 61 jersey.
Kurtz’s baseball viewing isn’t a zero-sum game, and he hopes that’ll prove true for the legions of new KBO fans. He understands if it’s a passing fad for some. But ESPN has committed to broadcast the entire season in its platforms, and the ubiquity of content has made consuming sports from a foreign country a not-so-foreign concept. The missing element of the KBO’s signature atmosphere, with games currently in empty stadiums, is one complexity Kurtz hopes can intensity the experience.
If just one person sticks with the KBO beyond the pandemic, Kurtz will be happy.
“I’m a realist: When Major League Baseball comes back, I’ll be watching the Phillies,” he said. “But I’ll be watching the KBO, too. And I hope other fans have that same attitude, that I’m going to watch as many live sports as I can and the KBO is one of them. I’m hoping that more fans do that, as a fan of the league.”