Considering it was a priority in my life for a bunch of years, I’ve done relatively little travelling in Korea. Prior to working in scouting I’d been to Seoul exactly three times. I’ve been there six times since March. With my then girlfriend in grad school, or, I should say, a grad school in Korea, free Saturdays were rare. That left Sunday day trips, if she managed to wake before 2 p.m.

I’ve never felt lacking for this and have come to see wherever you go is basically where you are, whether it be the bottom of a bowl of some exotic cuisine or the back of some museum full of relics from time period X. That’s not to say travelling doesn’t have it’s existantial benefits, it’s just that, well, I think the more loved you feel and the more satisfied you are, the less you want to take the time to go somewhere else.

Of course this is all thrown out the window when you have a job that requires travelling. I’ve never worked in the corporate world. Scouting comes closest to that. I used to cross the Bay Bridge to write a film or music review when I worked at the newspaper. I once got flown to New York for a music conference by Interscope Records as a bribe for putting the band Dishwalla on my college radio station’s playlist. That would be the extent of my business travel.

At one tournament I met a recently hired scout who was starting the first of seven weeks in Asia. He lives in the south of the United States. He was coming to Korea, heading to Japan, Taiwan, Australia, back to Korea, and then I think to Hong Kong — where his wife lives. I’ve met other people who do Advance Scouting, which is to say they follow the team they work for — in advance of the team. Presumably alone. I like being alone and I’ve come to like travelling in Korea alone, but there’s something about being out in front of a team that sounds like someone riding a horse alone. Out on some barren plain.

In case you can’t tell I just got back from a trip yesterday. Out in the Korean countryside, to see a rightfielder from one of the smaller high schools in one of the smaller cities I would ever come upon in Korea. I had to take a plane, to take a train, to take a taxi to get there.

Ulsan, where I live now is one of the bigger cities in Korea, but I live on the edge of an old part of town. It often feels like the countryside. Being a foreigner at large in Korea I’m always in danger of being called out by a Korean. Usually the Korean is young, and the most common call out is “hi!” No biggy. Kids can be cute, especially when they’re wearing school uniforms and, sorry, especially if they’re little girls. (Don’t read too much into that.)

But sometimes instead of “hi,” you get the “외국인,” which means “foreign person.” Sure, calling someone a “foreigner” is kind of rude in the west, but in Korea it’s pretty normal. Although I will point out that Korea was closed off to foreign people until 1876, so the implied identification of a person of “not like us” is there. These days, in the countryside of Ulsan, where I now live, it’s not uncommon for me to be referred to as “우리나라사람 안님니다,” which is like saying, “hey it’s a person who’s not from our country.”

I can’t very well go around punching little boys in the face for saying these things. Usually I ignore it. Sometimes I say “go away,” and if I’m in a bad mood I’ll ask them if they’re Japanese or Chinese, but this never harms them in the way I’d like. Usually they just laugh or look perplexed.

When I arrived at my scouting destination I knew I was in an even more extreme version of where I live. However, that being said, I find that in Korea this can work for you. I once read in a book about North Korea that when a westerner speaks the Korean language to a North Korean the level of surprise is similar to you taking a walk in a forrest, pulling out a cigareete and having a tree holding a lighter bend down to light it for you. What I’m saying is that sometimes in Korea, the sheer fact that I am not a Korean is so shocking to whatever person I’m encountering, that they’re just confused, embarrassed and thereby polite. This being opposed to people in a number of other countries, who upon becomming confused and embarrased, become obstanant and mean.

So I’m walking around this town and everyone is either avoiding my eyes or staring at me wide-eyed. I get a taxi which takes me even further out into the country, and litterally into what would appear to be a jungle. There aren’t jungles in Korea, regardless of what you learned about the country (which is 37 degrees north of the equator) while watching M*A*S*H, but then, there I was in one.

Somewhere behind this jungle was a baseball field. Or rather, a baseball field had been dropped into said jungle. There was some dirt behind the fence where home plate was, and that lead to a road that led to another road which led to a paved road, but the rest was pure vegetation. A wall of it had assumed outfield wall, and another wall of it had started to assume the conrete steps that served as a sitting area. In some places roots from trees had started to grow up through the cement.

I was one of the first people there so I sat down and reviewed my notes on the outfielder. This was a prime prospect, a well-proportioned specimen with a sweet stroke. The first game I saw him he lined balls off both the left and right field walls for triples and had drilled another to the gap for a double. My boss had, on that day, for the first time put me on the spot and asked me to indentify “a prospect.” I’d looked at my notes and said “him,” at which point we’d both laughed because I’d nailed it. Later that night, when a friend and I ran into my boss in our hotel lobby at 2 a.m. we became embroiled in a lengthy conversation about said player’s body before I’d realized I hadn’t even introduced my good friend to my boss. Needless to say my friend quickly made an excuse to get out of there and go home.

There at the ballyard in a jungle I watched for the rightfielder.