{"id":269737,"date":"2018-02-08T06:02:59","date_gmt":"2018-02-07T20:02:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=269737"},"modified":"2018-02-08T06:02:59","modified_gmt":"2018-02-07T20:02:59","slug":"sbl-teams-impresses-visiting-koreans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/sbl-teams-impresses-visiting-koreans\/","title":{"rendered":"SBL teams impresses visiting Koreans"},"content":{"rendered":"
A member of the visiting South Korean celebrity group, center, jokes around during a photo-op with his teammates and players from the GSM Cubs after their friendly match last Tuesday night at the Francisco \u201cTan Ko\u201d M. Palacios Ballfield. (Jon Perez)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A visiting South Korean group was impressed with the talent of Saipan\u2019s baseball players, especially the youth team that they challenged in a series of friendly matches at the Francisco \u201cTan Ko\u201d M. Palacios Ballfield.<\/p>\n

Gongnoriya\u2014a visiting team composed of Korean actors, comedians, and singers\u2014played against Saipan Baseball League teams from Sunday to Tuesday night as part of their annual trip to the island. They played against SBL Under 25 champions GSM Cubs on Tuesday night and then faced other squads in the Masters league and SBL\u2019s open division.<\/p>\n

Hong Seo Peom, who acted as the leader of the group, said the CNMI has a good baseball program as shown in their game against the Cubs.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a very young and talented team. All the players have good strong arms in throwing from the outfield. They are fast. They have a good foundation in baseball,\u201d said Hong, who pitched in their game against the Cubs.<\/p>\n

\u201cFour years ago, we always play against Koreans who are here on Saipan. This is the third straight year that we are playing against Saipan teams. We are looking forward again to come back and play against them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hong added that members of Gongnoriya are multi-artists by day and baseball players by night. <\/p>\n

\u201cBaseball is also big in Korea. We love playing baseball. We\u2019re celebrities but playing baseball is one of our passions. We enjoy playing for fun. We\u2019re actors, comedians, and singers, but at night we\u2019re baseball players. If I\u2019m not an actor, I would have been a player in the Korean league,\u201d added Hong.<\/p>\n

The group, which visits Saipan two times a year, arrived Thursday night and left yesterday morning.<\/p>\n

Another Korean group will be arriving in the next two weeks and will be playing several tune-up matches from Feb. 22 to 23 also at the \u201cTan Ko\u201d baseball field.<\/p>\n

Yong Chul Jang of M&E Enterprises Inc. Saipan, in cooperation with SBL coordinator Tony Rogolifoi, arranged for the scrimmages between the SBL teams and the visiting South Korean group.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A visiting South Korean group was impressed with the talent of Saipan\u2019s baseball players, especially…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":48,"featured_media":269744,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[20028,853,731,2746],"class_list":["post-269737","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports","tag-hong-seo-peom","tag-palacios-ballfield","tag-sbl","tag-south-korean"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269737","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/48"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=269737"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269737\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/269744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=269737"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=269737"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=269737"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}