Day: July 28, 2026

Welp, time to become an A’s fan

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

JoongAng: Oakland Sacramento Las Vegas The Athletics receive large investment from Team61, a group led by former great Chan-Ho Park, making him the first Korean to have a stake in a Major League Baseball team

If there were ever a more tailor-made story for me to want to write about, here it is.  Much as the Dodgers have basically sold themselves to Glorious Nippon, it seems fitting that Korea is attempting to gain control over an MLB organization as well, with the team formerly known as the Oakland A’s, eventually going to be landing in Las Vegas one of these days.

But it’s not just the simple fact that Koreans are entwining themselves with an MLB team, it’s who.  Led by the ultimate Korean pioneer into MLB history, Chan-Ho Park, the first Korean-born player to make it in Major League Baseball, and his investment group Team61, Park once again finds himself making firsts in MLB, becoming the first Korean to have ownership stakes in an MLB team.

Obviously it’s completely relevant to mention all of his baseball statistics and serves as more than adequate justification to why he is qualified to become a part-owner in an entire club, but it’s not just Park that makes this whole thing so entertaining to me.

Among the other names that comprise of Team61, are notable Korean celebrities, such as Suga from BTS and actor Daniel Dae Kim, but the one that really got me, aside from Chan-Ho Park, was comedian/actor Ken Jeong.  Like, I love Dr. Ken as much as anyone else, but it’s just hilarious and tickles me to think of the notion of him having anything to do with the ownership of an MLB team.  But Koreans like making money, and it doesn’t seem like there’s any easier way to make money these days than with investments, and all four of these members of the Korean Avengers probably aren’t hurting for capital, and good on them to get in with sports franchise ownership, which has proven to be as endlessly inflating as much as gas prices.

I really wish there were a good photograph of the four Korean Avengers together, all wearing A’s jerseys, but in the spirit of timeliness I can’t find any.  So the one with Park, Jeong and some generic looking bald old white guys whom I’m assuming one is John Fisher, the hated owner of the team, will have to suffice, for now.

All the same, whilst I will remaining rooting and being a shitty worst fan ever for the Barves of my city of residence, if there were ever a time for me to be a real shittier and worst-er fan ever and pledge a modicum of allegiance to another team, it’s time to become an A’s fan.  Not that I had any beef with them in the first place, I just never cared about their existence, until now.

Future A’s vs. Dodgers games are about to become lit, and hopefully being in Las Vegas one day will make it really easy for the A’s to book Korean hotties to throw out first pitches, and combined with his degenerate gambling addiction, absolutely cripple Ohtani and his teammates whenever they take the field against my new team.

Hear me out: how to beat the Dodgers

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

The other day, I saw a clip of some K-pop baddie throwing out a first pitch at Citi Field in New York.  Jang Won-Young of some group called IVE, that I’ve never heard of did you see what I did there lol.  Tall, thin, obviously had the requisite work done in order to someone in Korean media, wearing a comically cropped Mets jersey.  Threw the pitch pretty straight but still bounced it, and the Mets scrub who got to receive the pitch couldn’t be any happier getting to stand next to a Korean baddie for a photo that will probably be in the highlight reel of his career.

I thought to myself, lol should’ve been a game against the dodgers, they always collapse when Korean baddies throw out the first pitch.  It turns out that this game was against the Dodgers, and the juggernaut Dodgers actually did collapse, getting blown out by the lowly Mets by a score of 8-3.

Naturally, this got the gears grinding in my brain, becoming curious of what the Win-Loss correlation between when cute Korean idols throw out the first pitch in games where the Dodgers are playing.  I didn’t dive too deep, and there are some notable gaps between some instances, but here’s the breakdown of what I was able to give a cursory dig into:

*I have no idea who MiSaMo is, the girls are all Japanese, but the group is technically classified as a K-pop group, a sub-group of Twice, which makes them count for this exercise

The funny thing is that what made me think of this theory was Jeon Jong-seo’s first pitch in 2024, where Dodger players all had their jaws on the ground as yellow fever overtook them, the Dodgers actually won that exhibition game against the KBO’s Kiwoom Heroes, which kind of debunks my theory.  But I cherry-picked the notion that Jeon is not a K-pop musical act, but an actress, so if you’re keeping count, the Dodgers are the opposite of undefeated in games where Korean baddies throw out the first pitch. 

Two times is a coincidence, but five times is a pattern.

Aside from this astonishing research done by me, it’s funny how frequently the Dodgers seem to be getting paired up in games where little Korean hotties are throwing out first pitches.  There’s absolutely zero percent chance that MLB teams have made this correlation that only I could notice, and it’s probably coming more from a place of team management seeing the woefully weeb-ey Dodgers and their half-Japanese roster, assuming all Asians are the same, and tacking the Chinese girl to throw out the first pitch when they visit, to satisfy all those Koreans in the stands.

But you heard it here first.  It’s actually really quite simple to defeat the unstoppable Dodgers, just get some K-pop idols to throw out the first pitches of the games in which they’re in town.  Their white players can’t help crashing out from yellow fever, and their Japanese players probably can’t handle the pressure of having to perform in the presence of the inferior sex of the race they think is beneath them.

I’d be absolutely delighted if any MLB teams were to come across my Moneyball-like theory, and like in the playoffs, coincidentally just start trotting out all sorts of Korean baddies to throw out first pitches in critical games where they really need a W against the Dodgers.