"Stove League" drama: Episode's three and four 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: 5.5 and 7.8% 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 above is from a press conference for the drama.. 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.

 Sure most read the above post so no need to rehash too much. We ended off with Dreams best and most popular player Lim Dong-Gyu smashing the window of Baek's vehicle. He's the new GM of the Dreams baseball team and Lim had heard rumors that Baek's first goal is to trade him. Lim was so furious he threw his gold glove award through Baek's windshield but he did leave an envelope full on cash to cover the costs. What we learn in this series are two main things, one that Lim is overrated as a player but more importantly what an arrogant jerk he is.
 After that incident the following night Baek met up with Lim who was hitting baseballs off a batting tee and his smashes were barely missing Baek. He's trying to put the pressure on the new general manager of Dreams but don't think that strategy will work with someone like Baek. Before any of the baseballs hit Baek in the head the team's manager Yoon passed by and luckily defused the situation. But Lim isn't finished with Baek yet, there's absolutely no way he's going to allow himself to be traded even though Dreams is the worst team in the league.
 Shortly after that potential incident Baek was walking home as his car was undriveable. There was a pair of hoodlums waiting for him and the hooligans beat Baek so severely that he ended up in the hospital. Right after that Lim and his two henchmen went to a restaurant where the Dreams head of their Operations department was. She's Se-Young and when she saw Lim with the two men she thought something amiss was up. She was correct as she then received a call from the hospital to pick up Baek, he couldn't quite come out and say it but the pair both knew Lim was behind the attack.

 After that attack you would have thought Lim would have backed off but that was far from the case. As Baek's car is still in the shop Se-Young wants to drive him from the ballpark to home, she's worried about the general manager's predicament. At first Se-Young wasn't on Baek's side but after these attacks she's behind him 100%, more so because of what happened the following night. As she was giving Baek a lift home the pair had been followed by a pair of cars who eventually cut her car off. Four men then jumped out of the two vehicles and to Se-Young it appeared to be a case of life and death. It was but calmly Baek made a phone call to an old friend.
 That man's name was Hong-Man, more like his nickname, and Baek had been the manager of his Ssireum team, that's a bit like Japanese sumo wrestling. Hong-Man is a huge individual and though it was four against one he was able to thwart the attack to save the lives of Baek and Se-Young. For now it's the last time Lim has done anything against Baek but there are many more shows to go, however Baek said if there's one more attack he'll report Lim to the police.
 As mentioned in the first recap Baek didn't know much about baseball though he did take in the occasional Dreams game. But the man has been studying everything about the game and these days due to analytics there's so much to learn. Baek still has all intentions of trading Lim, a few days after that attack he met up with the GM of the Vikings team. They're very successful as they always make the playoffs but just never have enough hitting to carry them to the championship.

The Vikings GM's name is Kim, he had never met Baek before but knew of Dreams hiring him. We didn't hear much of their conversation but the pair did strike up a deal, a major one though the full details weren't known for a while. What was first known to the public was that the Dreams star player Lim had been traded to the Viking for.... a setup man!? The backlash Baek heard from the fans and his own front office was brutal but he had his reasons. Kim was the name of the setup man and he was one of the best pitchers in the Korean league the previous season, but the problems were was he worth the cost of the best player from Dreams? Also, the main issue with Dreams has been their lack of starting pitching so what good would a setup man do if the team rarely has the lead?
 The Dreams front office from the scouts to the Operations department demanded a meeting with Baek to talk over the details of the trade which had been approved by the VP Kwon. Baek has really been doing his homework on baseball analytics and may know more than most of the staff who have been there for twenty years. Baek explained to his staff what an overrated player Lim was, stats don't always tell the whole truth. He wasn't a clutch hitter as he was just third on the team for having the most game winning hits.
 Plus Baek and the manager have agreed to raise the outfield walls seven feet, it wouldn't affect most players but it would have cost Lim twelve of his forty home runs. Also Lim isn't a good hitter during the mid part of the season and really warms up when the team is out of the pennant race. One other thing Baek added in was that he's such a disruption to the team as so many good players had been traded because Lim didn't get along with them. The entire staff was impressed with how hard Baek had been working and even more so when he announced the full details of the trade.

 It wasn't just the setup pitcher Kim that Baek had obtained from the Vikings, he had also sent the Dreams top draft pick to them for the starting pitcher Kang. Getting him was what really impressed the Dreams staff as Kang is one of the top pitchers in Korea, perhaps even the best. Baek has only been on the job for a week or so but he's improved the Dreams team dramatically in that time. Though Lim on paper was their best player not many of his teammates were sad to see him leave, neither were the staff after Baek's speech. Lim had pleaded with the VP Kwon and the CEO Ko to veto the trade which they refused to do. Lim may be an arrogant jerk but he was also smart enough to realize that his stats will suffer if he has to play in a different park.
 Kang had at one time been a member of the Dreams team and was their best pitcher. But he had been traded to the Vikings because of Lim who didn't want a teammate to become a bigger star. With that major trade for the Dreams team this episode came to it's close. In future recaps will talk a bit about Baek's past or at least hope to. Don't know much about it but he does have a teenage son living with him who is in a wheelchair. Baek had also been married and think we briefly met his ex-wife at the beginning of the first show but her identity wasn't revealed.

 Have been zipping through these shows as it's such a fun, enjoyable and interesting series. Can't keep the recaps as short as shows whose episodes are only 25 minutes but think the quality has improved a bit the last few months as to me they're much easier to read. We're halfway through this mini marathon as there's two more recaps after this one.