May 5, 2020

By Adam Morissette

Baseball Canada

OTTAWA – The eyes of the baseball world will shift to Korea on May 5 for the start of the Korea Baseball Organization (KBO) season that includes London, Ontario’s Jamie Romak who will be entering his fourth season with SK Wyverns, one of the teams in the 10-team loop.

The start of the season has been delayed due to concerns over the Covid-19 pandemic that the country has worked hard to manage and contain the spread over the last several weeks.

Games starting on May 5 will take place in empty stadiums which will be an adjustment for players who are used to an energetic and loud atmosphere that the league is known for.

"So much of the uniqueness about this league is the fans and how loud and energetic they are, how much noise and music and cheering is going on. And now there's nobody," said Romak in a recent article by the Canadian Press. "So that's bizarre.

"But we're playing baseball, which is a lot further ahead of basically every other sport in the world."

After a pair of stints in the big leagues with the Dodgers (2014) and Diamondbacks (2015), Romak signed with SK Wyverns during the early part of the 2017 season and has slammed 103 home runs over the past three years while helping the club with the Korean Series in 2018.

ESPN has picked up the rights to air six KBO games per week across the United States as sports fans throughout the world look for a way to get their sports fix while virtually all professional leagues have shutdown as a result of Covid-19.

Romak and SK Wyverns open up their season on May 5 (1 a.m. E.T.) at home against Hanwha in the first of a three-game series before hitting the road to take on Lotte and the LG Twins.

An English website, mykbostats.com, does an excellent job covering the KBO for fans who ware interested in following the league.