Stove League

Presentation

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Analysis

Synopsis

​Baek Seung Soo is a specialist, when it comes to training a loosing sports team and leading it to victory. He is hired to take care of the baseball team called Dreams, whose operations manager is Lee Se Young. The team has a lot of problems (in and out) and Back Seung Soo will try everything in his power to make it become the best team of the season. 

My Opinion (No Spoilers)

This drama is fantastic! I was so happy to find out that it had won Best Drama at the 56th Baeksang Arts Awards, winning over Crash Landing on You, Itaewon Class and many other hits! 

I am not a really huge fan of sports in general and baseball is thus very far away in terms of knowledge and interest. Yet, this drama made me discover an entire new universe, a system that I had never heard off and a sports that is played and won on as well as outside the field. 

​Baseball fans or not, I highly recommend you watch it! 

​Analysis (Spoiler Alert)

Baek Seung Soo: Baek Seung Soo (Namgung Min) is a strategist. That noun is the best way to characterize him I think. He is the man of the situation, when it comes to restructuring a team. He has had past experiences in other sports like volleyball or wrestling, so he knows how the restructuring works, but he enters a whole new universe with baseball. He is cold and can seem to be a boss, who just doesn’t care, but he really has the team at heart and only wants and does what’s best for it. His greatest quality is that he is not afraid of challenge. He doesn’t back out in front of troubles, even if it means having the entire team and staff hating him or disagreeing with him. I loved the fact Seung Soo had a line of conduct and a pre-established winning strategy that he set into place no matter what. He is also a planner on the long run and a great worker (he studied so much to understand the sports and find the cracks in its team’s strategy and the others’). 

He doesn’t side with anyone, if not the team and only the team. But this doesn’t mean he doesn’t care about the team members or the staff. He protects them as much as he can and helps them realizing their own dreams. The one thing his doesn’t accept is egoistic behavior, since a team is about collectivity and community not individualism. Therefore, he gets rid of all of those who get in the way with their bad and toxic mindset. 

​He is an admirable character, an excellent leader and I also found at some point an unlucky one. Every team he has accompanied has been disbanded in the end and all his hardwork went down the pipe. Still, he doesn’t give up and keeps looking for the team, in which he will finally belong. I felt a lot of empathy for this character, even though he seems distant and doesn’t share much of his emotions, I could see he was very involved in the success and failure of the team and was in fact desperately waiting for it to accept him as a manager (which was difficult, as a replaced someone very liked and made decisions that created clusters). 

​The depiction of a system: Baseball is a very important sports in South Korea, so I was not shocked to see that they would dedicate an entire drama to it. At first, I started the drama because of the main cast Park Eun Bin and Namgung Min, but I wasn’t expecting such an incredible plot and so many violent and intelligent twists in the intrigue. All of these elements allow us as viewers to simply get a better understanding of everything that happens behind the curtains, when the match is off. 

​First, the title Stove League refers to the off-season period. Ok, so first question: why do a drama about that period, right? We want to see matches and home runs and the game in itself; but the focus on that specific period is actually the most interesting and in reality the most strategic for all teams. Thus, we get to see how players train, how players are traded between teams (which I knew nothing of and was actually surprised to see how it was done), how the staff recruits rookies or new players, how they set the salaries of the team, how they get sponsors and a whole lot of hurdles that the Dreams team has to overcome if they want to make it to the finals. It was incredible for me to discover all of these (hidden) aspects of baseball, that are in fact the keys to success during the season. The entire drama is building up towards the climax: the last game of the season and the possible victory of the team; which makes this off-season period even more important. 

​Second, I liked the emphasis put on absolutely everyone in the team. We don’t just follow Baek Seung Soo trying to shift mindsets; we also get the chance to get a glimpse of everyone’s story – players who had scandals, players who are not that good anymore, those who are in a slump, those who are ending their career, recruiters looking for rookies, managers and the tough law of the Talion among teams and above all, probably the best part the statisticians. Indeed, statistics in baseball decide the game. They are so important to rank matches and first and foremost players. One who can read properly statistics has already won 50% of the game; the rest is up to players (that you buy, trade and train). 

​Resilience, strategy and teamwork: Throughout the drama, I was immersed in the daily life struggles of the team and was expecting that all of their efforts will actually pay off. Each episode is full of twists and unexpected turns of events; leaving you breathless and stressed out several times. I felt as if I was part of the team and was fighting alongside Seung Soo to win. 

By the end of the drama though, the strong and constant messages conveyed for 16 episodes are engraved in viewers. I personally finished the last episode with a love for baseball as strong as that of players, I understood perfectly the concept of resilience and remained amazed by the effects of teamwork and strategy, if directed towards a common goal. 

​Watching this drama is an adventure but a crazy good one! Plus, I am pretty sure now I can still recognize all the members of the team!

​P.S: Were you also so happy to see the cameo of Lee Je Hoon as the CEO of the tech company at the end? 

​P.S.2: The name of the team of course: Dreams! What better name to describe a team, whose members made their dreams actually come true!