Kia Tigers general manager Cho Gye Hyun put a contract on the table at a Los Angeles restaurant and made his intent clear: He wanted Matt Williams to manage his team in South Korea and he wasn’t leaving the United States without him.
The two men had met once before, nearly 40 years ago. Cho pitched for the South Korean amateur national team. Williams played for the US amateur national team. An impromptu catch-up in California turned into a life-altering job offer. Could Williams upend his life and move to Gwangju, South Korea?
Williams, 52, was content as third base coach for the Oakland A’s. On staff with close friend and manager Bob Melvin. The A’s had made the playoffs in each of his two seasons with the team. He liked having a front-row seat to watch and coach up-and-coming stars such as Matt Chapman and Matt Olson.
Still, he wanted another shot at managing. His first shot, with the Washington Nationals, resulted in a prestigious award — and a pink slip. The 2014 National League Manager of the Year was fired in 2015 after the Nationals failed to make the playoffs.
The desire to manage again ate at him. But the outlook for him was not promising.
“I think that anytime you don’t accomplish what you want to accomplish you feel a little bit of an empty belly,” Williams said last week by phone from Deagu, South Korea, where his team was preparing to play the Samsung Lions. “I wanted to give it another try. And it didn’t seem as if there would be an opportunity in the U.S. to do so immediately. anyway.”
Williams talked it over with his wife and children. He talked it over with Melvin and A’s executive vice president of baseball operations Billy Beane. Beane told him a managerial job in Korea wouldn’t guarantee the same back home.
“I’m fully aware of that,” Williams said. “But this was put out in front of me. I decided to go ahead accept and pour my energy into this. It’s not what I’m used to, but sometimes it’s good for you to be comfortable being uncomfortable.”
Just five days after Cho’s offer in L.A., Williams arrived in Gwangju as the team’s first American-born manager. He has a three-year contract.
Now, eight months and one global pandemic later, Williams’ Tigers and their Korean Baseball Organization brethren are among the only professional sports teams playing meaningful games — a distinction that has landed the league an English-language broadcast deal with ESPN.
Williams is tasked not only with managing the 11-time champion Tigers — off to a 2-4 start –– but managing them through a pandemic.
In addition to the rules of the new league — for one, there’s a 12-inning limit on games — Williams also needed to adjust to coronavirus-specific set of rules the KBO released in order to start its season May 5 after a delay of five weeks.
Some of the rules: players are prohibited from spitting, discouraged from shaking hands and have taken up “ghost high-fiving.” Umpires and translators wear masks and gloves. Players and staff must take their temperatures twice before entering the stadium; anything above 37 degrees Celsius is cause for concern. If a player has symptoms and tests positive, the whole team must get tested and go into quarantine for two weeks and the entire league could shut down again.
“The guys are diligent about it because this is their livelihood, this is how they support themselves and their families,” Williams said.
In Gwangju, the Tigers’ hometown, of 1.5 million people, there hasn’t been a coronavirus case in nearly three weeks. The city of Deagu, where Williams phoned from last week, was South Korea’s coronavirus epicenter. The curve has flattened in Deagu — 18 new cases May 9 — but the fear remains.
In South Korea, coronavirus-prevention protocols aren’t much different than their typical baseball practices.
The habit of spitting, so prevalent in American baseball, does not exist here. Baseballs don’t need to be rubbed down by the umpires before a game; they come pre-rubbed.
“There is no Mississippi mud over here,” Williams said.
Players are typically isolated on road trips. Pregame meals and meetings are held in the hotel’s confines. If a game starts at 6:30 p.m., the team doesn’t leave the hotel until 4 p.m. for batting practice and stretching. The visiting clubhouse is rarely visited; players board the team bus in uniform and leave on the bus five minutes after the game to hang out together back at the hotel for dinner and meetings.
“It’s completely different than what we do in the States. They don’t go hang out at the ballpark,” Williams said.
Although the shift in routine is mild for KBO players, they are still adjusting to Williams.
“it’s a little bit of a culture shock for them because I’m bringing kind of an American system to it,” Williams said.
For the first time, the Tigers spent spring training in Florida, among MLB teams. That’s where Williams learned another big difference from American baseball. Players in the KBO are accustomed to morning workouts continuing after lunch, and then again after dinner.
“We’ve tried to curb that a little bit,” Williams said.
The language barrier is a hurdle, too. Williams has a translator (masked) tailing him to-and-from mound visits, team meetings and umpire squabbles. A few of the players are taking the opportunity to learn key English phrases so they can better communicate with their manager.
But it’s not so bad.
“The reality is that we all speak baseball,” Williams said.
