Club sports are increasingly becoming an international phenomenon. But while exhibition matches and friendlies have long been part of many sports teams’ preseason routines, having regular season games take place in different international cities is a newer development. The NFL has held recent games in England and Germany, for instance — and the MLB’s Giants and Padres recently played the first regular season Major League Baseball games in Mexico.
It certainly sounds as though Major League Baseball has ambitious plans for bringing its teams around the world. Jack Harris of the Los Angeles Times reports that next season, the Dodgers and Padres might be playing a handful of games against one another in South Korea.
Harris cites an unnamed source with the news that the two teams would open the 2024 season on the road — and across the Pacific Ocean. As Harris points out, this won’t be the first time the Dodgers have made such a trip; their 2014 season began in Australia.
And South Korea makes sense as a destination for an MLB rivalry, as the country is home to a thriving domestic league. As you may recall, it was in the spotlight in 2020 due to being one of the few sports leagues that continued playing during the early days of the pandemic. A Baseball America article from 2020 argued that the top Korean league was “between Double-A and Triple-A in terms of talent and competition level.”
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The Padres were one of the nice surprises of the shortened 2020 MLB seasonAccording to the Times, the decision to proceed with the overseas games is not yet set in stone. It’ll be one to keep an eye on — and could make for some excellent travel opportunities for diehard Dodgers and Padres fans alike.
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