"Stove League" drama: Episode's five and six recap

 Air Dates: December 13th until February 14, 2020 on SBS, two half hour episodes aired on Friday and Saturdays at 10:00 pm

 Ratings: 7.3 and 9.6% but the numbers increased so much it hit 20% for the final show.

Main Cast: It's a very huge one and you can see some of the main characters in the above pic, won't list all now but will edit this as time goes on adding or subtracting to it.

Namgung Min as Baek Seung-Soo.... new GM for the Dreams baseball team even though he didn't know much about the sport, had been a GM for a handball and hockey team.

Park Eun-Bin as Lee Se-Young.... gung-ho young female working in the operations department for the Dreams team, first female in Korea to have that honor plus lives and dies for her team.

Oh Jung-Se as Kwon Kyung-Min.... nephew of the owner of the Dreams team and really has control of the club, was Baek's biggest supporter at first.

Joe Byeong-Gyu as Han Jae-Hee.... Se-Young's assistant in the operations department

Son Jong-Hak as Ko Kang-Seon.... main CEO of Dreams.

Kim Do-Hyun as Yoo Kyung-Teak.... general exec in the front office

Kim Soo-Jin as Im Mi-Sun.... head of marketing

Park Jin-Woo as Byeon Chi-Hun.... another main exec in the front office
Lee Jun-Hyeok as Ko Se-Hyeok.... leader of the scouting team
Kim Ki-Moo as Yang Woo-Seok.... top scout

Lee Eol as Yoon Seong-Bok.... manager of the Dreams baseball team

Ha Do-Kwon as Kang Doo-Ki.... ace pitcher just obtained in a trade

Jo Han-Soo as Lim Dong-Gyu.... popular Dreams outfielder traded for Jang

Cha-Yub as Seo Yeong-Ju.... catcher for the Dreams team

Kim Min-Sang as Lee Cheol-Min.... bench coach for Dreams

Son Kwang-Eop as Choi Yong-Gu.... pitching coach for Dreams

Lee Dae-Yeon as Kim Jong-Mu.... GM for the rival Vikings team

 Whew, as mentioned above will be tweaking that huge cast list as we go on. If you're a baseball fan and I am then this would be a drama you'd definitely get into. The action began during the final game of the 2019 Dreams team season and as the title says it's what goes on during the off season in baseball. Like many current Korean dramas it's an hour show that was cut in half to make two so it aired on sixteen nights with 32 episodes. There's many, many videos on YT for the drama, will have a different one for each post and the above one has some highlights from this episode. There aren't many baseball scenes as it was the team's final game but the ones we do see on occasion were filmed at the Munhak Stadium in Incheon where the real team SK Wyverns play.

 Have watched eight episodes and one thing I've noticed is that Baek has never smiled once, check out the screenshots to see if I'm mistaken. He's only been the Dreams GM for a few weeks but big things have been taking place as their start player Lim was traded to the Vikings team who are always in the playoffs but needed more hitting. Baek was able to get the starting pitcher Kang in return and most feel the Dreams team got the better of the deal as Kang is an ace pitcher.
 In the second screenshot above is the VP of Dreams Kwon, he's the nephew of the team's owner. The owner is quite a wealthy man who is getting tired of his baseball team losing money, had they been better that may have turned a profit. He's got something devious planned with Kwon as the owner wants to disband the team and Kwon will see to his wishes. That's all we heard of the impending doom of the Dreams team this show but there's a bit more about it in the next recap.
 Most of this episode and the following one has to deal with the scouting department of the team. For finishing in the cellar Dreams always has high draft picks but none of the players has been successful and very few have made the team. In the bottom screenshot is Ko, he's on the left and is head of the scouting team. Baek is a bit upset with the draft picks Ko and his staff have chosen over the years, is a shakeup to the scouting team in the works? Ko had formerly been a player on the Dreams team and was almost in line to be the manager but refused it. That was according to the VP Kwon who blurted out that info so the current manager Yoon could hear it.

 That location was at a restaurant where the staff were having Baek's welcoming party. Not a very happy time for most in attendance after the negative comments by Baek and Kwon. Most of the staff for Dreams really don't like or respect each other, at their final game of the year the players and coaches got into a melee in the dugout while the game was still in progress! Once again a huge brawl almost happened at the restaurant between the staff but it was luckily broken up by Se-Young. As I mentioned in the first post you may not be hearing much about her for a while but you will see her in plenty of screenshots.
 The best scout the team has is named Yang who rarely comes to the office. He was the one who made the selection for the number one pick at the draft which infuriated Ko who is his superior. The player chosen was a starting pitcher named Yoo Min-Ho who is a superb hurler but was hurt when he was drafted and who knew when he could pitch again. It's boneheaded picks like that which Baek isn't happy about, the following day he went to meet Yang for the first time.
 Yang was scouting a high school team and he's truly passionate about his job and the sport. Seems he's an excellent evaluator of baseball talent and looks out for the players he's scouting, if that's the case why have so many of his draft picks been flops? That's what Baek wanted to know and he didn't introduce himself right away to Yang who was very annoyed with Baek watching him work. Baek kept following his scout around and it bothered Yang so much he attacked Baek, that's when he admitted to Yang he was the new GM of Dreams.

 Yang brought Baek back to his small apartment and though Baek didn't admit it he was impressed with how much Yang knows and how hard he works. But as mentioned if Yang is so talented of a scout why aren't his draft picks becoming good players, especially seeing as how the Dreams team always has high draft picks? Another person curious about that too was Se-Young who we see above and in secret began tracking the status of the players drafted the past five years.
 While Yang may be the best scout the majority of players drafted have been because the scouting department's manager Ko chose those players. Se-Young feels something is going on behind the scenes and she's right about that. She wasn't sure how to approach Ko about the the players, she gave him a lift home but Ko bailed out when Se-Young began questioning him about his picks. What's going on with the scouting team so far is just the tip of the iceberg as so many new things are learned about their doings in the next recap, none of them are good for Ko and his staff.

 The reason Se-Young had been giving Ko a ride back to his place was because the pair had gone to the local police station to bail a player out. His name was Lee and he had been in a brutal fight with someone outside of a bar. Ko was able to settle the situation down and even persuaded the other person not to press charges. Ko does know the players so well and they look up to him, Se-Young had wondered why and that answer is one you'll read about in the next recap. Actually seemed more took place in the next two episodes than any others to date.
 We're approaching the conclusion of this episode with Baek once again going to meet Yang. With him is Se-Young's assistant Jae-Hee whose role hasn't been too important yet but it starts to become bigger in the next show. What the pair witnessed was Yang talking to a high school player's mother. Very deftly she slipped Yang an envelope which contained some cash, has Yang been taking bribes from players if the Dreams team will draft them? Makes sense as most of the players drafted have been flops, what really happened will be discussed in the next post.

 Looking at these screenshots made me realize why Korean dramas may not be so popular here. Most of the cast is 25 and older with the majority of them being much older. Seems most viewers these days prefer looking at posts with Idols, can't really fault anyone for that as I enjoy the pics too but these days my tastes are turning towards older women or at least ones older than 25. One more recap to go for this superb series which is the following post.