"Stove League" drama: Episode's fifteen and sixteen 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: 12.2 and 14.9% 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, fired in ep. 4
Kim Ki-Moo as Yang Woo-Seok.... top scout
Yoon Sun-Woo as Baek Young-Soo.... Seung-Soo's younger brother who needs a wheelcahir, joined Dreams analytic team in episode eleven

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 is from the intense ending of episode 16. 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.

 Ended the last recap off with Baek and Se-Young going to a club to have a discussion about the catcher Seo's contract. What a nightmare that discussion turned out to be as Seo had been drinking when the pair arrived, he's a very belligerent man when sober and even worse with alcohol in him. Seo won't accept a penny less than $500,000 to play the next season which is nowhere close to what Baek is offering him. Instead of talking matters over like a civilized person Seo dumped his drink on Baek's pants.... BOOM! Discussion over as Se-Young tore into Seo which stunned him immensely. The pair left and if it's up to her then Seo's contract should be withdrawn. We'll be hearing from Seo soon enough as word reached him that Baek was trying to trade him because of that incident.
 Last recap said all of the players save for Seo and Kwak had signed, not quite accurate as there were a few youngsters still without a contract. Ko has been trying to get them to side with his new agency but once again things aren't working out well for him as those players want to sign anything to keep playing. These four players haven't proven themselves yet and there's no other team in the league that would sign them if they were cut from Dreams. They too had noticed that Ko was up to something and using them as pawns to get back at Beak who Ko had thought fired him without reason. Eventually these four young players realized that Ko didn't have their best interests at heart so eventually did sign a contract at a reduced rate which was at least better than nothing.
 Soon there will be just one player left to sign who will be Seo. Kwak is also a young player but one that has a bit more pull as he's an up and coming star which Baek realized as he offered him a contract of $200,000. Kwak pressed Ko about the contract details as he had been leaving the negotiations in the hands of Ko. When Kwak heard the offer was 200 K he became a bit furious with Ko and soon dumped him as an 'agent'. Kwak handled the contract by himself and dealt with Jae-Hee whose role has been growing with each episode. He surprised Kwak with the contract as Baek gave permission to go all the way to $250,000, Kwak immediately signed hearing at that figure.

 For a while it appeared Baek was leading a charmed life as a GM for Dreams soon became the first team in the league to sign all of their players. Se-Young went to meet with the catcher Seo and though she's such a small figure next to his imposing build she ripped him into him fiercely for being so irresponsible with his drinking and overblown ego. After giving matters a more serious thought Seo relented and went to Baek saying he would sign the contract at the lower offer which was never mentioned, perhaps $300,000? Also the veteran pitcher Jang had a change of heart and has agreed to play the following season for $50,000, though he could make more running a restaurant he knew he'd regret it for the rest of his life if he didn't give baseball one more shot.
 The good times weren't going to last forever and the person to get the bad times rolling for Baek was the above reporter Kim. She had interviewed the new pitcher Kill that Baek had brought back from America, two weeks after the interview was done it aired on the popular 'Baseball Life' show. Baek had been a bit leery about her as she's been known to stoop to very low levels to make her look like a good reporter. That's what she did for the Kill interview as she spliced the video up so the answers he gave Kim to questions weren't the ones she had asked. It made Kill and the Dreams team appear as though they were ungrateful for the second chance Kill was getting to be a pro player. The public tore into the team ruthlessly on social media but things get much worse.
 Baek was still a bit furious about the budget for salaries getting cut by 30% and he had a plan to make his employers look quite bad. Jaesong is the group that owns Dreams and Baek sent an article to Kim's rival reporter detailing what actions the owners have been taking trying to make the team worse than ever. Baek stressed in the article that the players had been forced to take an average of 30% in salary reductions and to make up for it Baek was going to donate his entire salary to make up for some of the reductions!!!! Needless to say this made the Jaesong brass more than irate and it was up to the owner's nephew Kwon to clear the mess up and save their reputation.

 For a long time Kwon had been Baek's biggest backer, that was up to episode five but because of the pressure from the team's owner Kwon is soon to become his biggest enemy, perhaps right after Ko though. Kwon has agreed to give the players what ever money Baek gave them, I figure it was around $500,000, as long as Baek told the press he was getting paid again. That cleared that situation up slightly as of course the players were happy that their contracts were going to be a bit larger as their salaries will be increased 11% though most are still getting lower salaries than the previous year.
 But Baek's actions will have some major ramifications as the owner now wants Kwon to get rid of this troublemaker even though he's improved the team immensely in such a short period of time. Kwon had also discovered that Baek's younger brother Young-Soo had gotten a job in the analytics department. His brother is such an avid follower of baseball stats and though he's in a wheelchair he should prove to be invaluable to the team. Baek had nothing to do with his brother being hired, he was dead set against it when Young-Soo applied but Se-Young was the reason for his hiring as she couldn't let such a talent pass by them.
 So with that hiring and Baek's slandering of the team it's come down to Kwon not having much of a choice, to him Baek must be fired!!!! The pair meet in the show's final two minutes and what a suspenseful cliffhanger this turned out to be. Kwon ripped into Baek savagely telling him all of the reasons he should be canned, to Kwon it was more than enough to be fired as he told Baek to go to his office and clear it out as he was no longer the GM of Dreams! Wow, intense ending but of course you have to think that Baek will somehow retain his position as there's still sixteen shows to go.

 The salary negotiations may have taken up too much time in the past two shows but they did turn out to be very important to the story as they're a major reason for the 'firing' at the end. Would like to have the next quartet of recaps within the week but as usual probably won't be able to accomplish it. To date this has been such a superb show which hasn't any much filler to it which is rare for long series in their middle episodes, definitely recommend this drama to any baseball fan.