"Stove League" drama: Episode's thirteen and fourteen 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: 8.2 and 11.4% 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 a newish behind the scenes video. 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.

 Right above is Kwon, he's the nephew of Ko(there's two with that name) who is the president of the Dreams baseball team. Kwon's main responsibility is running the team and for the most part seemed like a good guy who had Baek's back, that is up until the end of episode four. That's when we learned that Ko wants to disband the Dreams team, he's a very successful businessman and hates owning a tam that loses money. Kwon is secretly doing things to make Baek's job more difficult in his quest to disband the team, the biggest thing to date ended off the previous episode which is that Baek was ordered to cut the budget for salaries by 30%!
 Baek was and still is furious with that order but has no options but to obey. The budget wasn't huge to begin off with, only $5.53 million which seems very low to me but now it'll drop to $4 million. One way to do that is for the Dreams team to cut ten players, everyone on the staff is against that but what else can they do? Cutting players may actually be an easier task than what's next on Baek's agenda which is to get the unsigned players to sign a contract.... with a 30% reduction in salary!
 Of course most won't be pleased with the news but players need to play for seven seasons before they can become free agents so most don't have the option of leaving the Dreams team. One problem could be the ex-director of scouting who was Ko, he's become an agent to represent the players who haven't signed. Ko has said he won't be taking a commission as he secretly has a motive. That's to destroy Baek as he thought he was fired unfairly, that wasn't true at all but for a man like Ko who has devoted 25 years to baseball he has no other options in life.

 Of course no one in the world wants to take a 30+% reduction in salary but it seems like Korean baseball players may be affected more than most workers. Their salaries there pale in comparison to what American players make which makes sense as Korea is much smaller. The Dreams team has only a little over $4 million to pay forty players, the new pitcher from America Kill has signed for $500,000 while their other new pitcher acquired in a trade, Kang, must also make a decent salary. So that means some players may make only $50,000 or less which is what's going to happen. The longest tenured Dreams player Jang was offered a salary of $50,000 which is quite a drop from $130,000.
 He's a starting pitcher who is about 35 years old. He's seen better days and is no where near as effective as he once was, Jang does hold the team record with 19 victories in a season. A friend of his who owns a restaurant wants to open in a second location and has offered Jang the manager's position for it. Jang has reluctantly agreed to the offer, he knows he needs to think about his future but deep down would play for that salary but he has a family to feed. For now he's told Se-Young he'll retire though she told him the offer would still be there for a few more days.
 Meanwhile the majority of the other players have grumbled about their salaries but most have signed. When you're in your mid twenties with no other options a salary between $50-100,000 isn't that bad. Plus you have to consider that the Dreams team have been cellar dwellars for four straight years so obviously many players are replaceable. Makes me wonder then why Baek and his staff want to sign so many players who haven't made Dreams a competitive team. Ko as an agent has been a flop, he's got a huge mouth and ego but can't back up either with his actions. Seeing as how he's taking no commissions from the players none of them actually signed a contract with him, they're realizing his only objective is to bring Baek down.

 So most of those players Ko has tried to represent have ignored his actions and signed their contracts. Think most of the players realize Baek isn't a bad person and if it was up to him there never would have been a reduction in salaries. So there's just two remaining players who haven't signed a contract, one is Kwak who has been letting Ko represent him but his talks with Baek have been a failure. The contract is worth $200,000 which would make him one of Dreams best paid players, if Kwak knew what was offered he would accept but Ko wasn't being reasonable and kept pressing Baek for more, that gets continued on into the next recap.
 The other player you can see above who is the catcher Seo, he's demanding a salary of $500,000. While one of the best defensive catchers in the league Seo gets injured too often forcing him to miss many games. Baek's offer is nowhere near what Seo wants, Baek during these salary talks won't negotiate as it's either take what's offered or leave the team. Seo stormed out of the meeting but soon realized he had better come to his senses which he only partially did.
 He invited Baek and Se-Young to join him at dinner which really was a drinking party. Seo just had surgery so Baek said why would you be drinking hard liquor so soon? Seo was quite belligerent with the pair who told him to shape up now or the the contract would be withdrawn. The episode ended with the trio about to sit down and discuss the contract more thoroughly. Just before the ending we saw the Dreams main boss Kwon meet with Ko in his office which left us with a few pondering questions. Seems the two are working together as Kwon says if Baek quits then would perhaps Ko want his position? Wonder if Kwon is behind Ko becoming an agent and so much more about what Kwon wants to do to Baek comes out in the next recap.

 Sometimes it may seem as though I don't enjoy writing these up as I often talk about making them shorter or whatever. That's far from the truth which is that I cause my own misery. Would be so much easier and perhaps faster if I wrote a recap up after viewing an episode. But no, most of the time I view 3-4 shows before writing anything up which leaves my head spinning thinking about how much writing I need to do at once. So think for the second half of the series will try to do what I suggested, watch an episode and then write a recap up like this right after. Think in the end run it'll work out better doing it that way and after this post is the last of these four recaps in a row.