The Squid Games and Men's Baseball

The Washington All Stars in the 2021 Roy Hobbs World Series

Rick displays how to hit a baseball

Last week I went to Fort Myers, Florida to play in 'The Roy Hobbs World Series'. This is a men's baseball tournament held every fall. Players get a patch for their baseball bag.

I played in the 45 (age) plus 'Masters' Division with the Washington All-Stars. There were 64 teams from around the country competing in this division and we were able to play at major league facilities in perfect weather for baseball. This was a new team for me. Two teammates from the Wilton Blue Jays, Dave Lustberg and Tim Debany had previously played for years with the Washington All-Stars in this tourney and suggested I come along to serve as a pitcher.

Dave Lustberg making the throw to first

Tim Debany getting ready to drive the ball

It is always interesting playing with new players and against new teams. Baseball guys tend to be optimistic energetic guys –playing baseball after 45 is only for glass half full personalities.

Tom the manager

I met the team at a practice the day before the tourney started could see we had some good players. Of course, other than my two friends, the team didn’t know what to expect from the new pitcher but I was confident going into the week. Here are some of them in action:

The video is pitch by your favorite correspondent.

Gus finishing his swing

Andy banging a solid hit

Don coiling to drive one to the wall

Rick gearing up

Gus receiving the pitch

Mark making a throw

Larry driving another hit

The next morning, at the hotel breakfast the players were animated about the upcoming week and eager to compete (as was I). One side topic of discussion was the recent popular show on Netflix –‘Squid Games’ had anyone seen it? My daughter Kelly and a lady I work with -Ming- had suggested I would like the show. It turned out that a couple of the players had seen it and thought it was interesting.

As I had some free time, I decided to watch it. The funny thing is that watching the show tied in with playing baseball (if one stretched a little). Then again, friends and family know I always find a way to tie in baseball regardless of the topic.

So below is a recap of the show and subsequently how it seemed relevant to baseball.

Spoiler alert: If you plan to watch the show but haven't yet . then don't read any further .

If you have seen the show, then let's play two !

He is the background for Squid games:

Gi-hun (456) flanked by player 001 and player 218

Our main character is Seong Gi-hun. He is a divorced father and heavily indebted gambler who lives with his elderly mother. He is invited to play a series of children's games for a chance at a large cash prize. Accepting the offer, he is taken to an unknown location where he finds himself among 456 players who are all deeply in debt. These are people presented as heading down a path of doom . The players are made to wear green tracksuits and are kept under watch at all times by masked guards in pink jumpsuits with the games overseen by the Front Man, who wears a black mask and black uniform.

The players soon discover that losing a game results in their death, with each death adding ₩100 million to the potential ₩45.6 billion grand prize. ( South Korean Won exchange rate is about 1200 Won to 1USD) . Immediate execution is a big downside to being on the short end of a game-but these are desperate people that see no other way out of their circumstances. Gi-hun allies with other players, including his childhood friend Cho Sang-woo, to try to survive the physical and psychological twists of the games.

Along the course of the games Gi-Hun befriends Player 001 –an elderly man suffering from a brain tumor. (Oh-Il-nam). At first Player 001 seemed to be an ordinary old man who got to participate in the Squid Game as a destitute player. Because of his brain tumor, it seemed that he did not fully grasp the situation and was just enjoying the games as a way to have fun before his death. But we learn there is more to him than meets the eye.

Player 001 later identified as Oh-Il-nam

The Games :

There are six games and assuming you have seen the show you know survivors advance while losers are quickly eliminated.

These are the games :

Game 1 : Red Light Green Light

Game 2 : Sugar honeycombs

Game 3 : Tug of War

Game 4 : Marbles

Game 5 : Hopscotch

Game 6 : Squid Game

But the 'game' I found most compelling was Marbles

Prior to the marbles game, players are requested to choose a partner. We believe this next game will be pairs taking on another pair, so players choose accordingly. If we were baseball players on a team in this situation we would likely choose either the best player or our best friend. I was thinking of the various teams I have played and who I would pick to partner. For my Amherst College team, maybe I would pick Bob Lavigne who was our best athlete and coincidentally coming to the tourney to watch a game that I would pitch. More recently, I would pick Charlie Zunda who was my catcher for many years sharing the highs and lows while practicing all the time to get better. Or this past August, my two summer teams combined to play a double header at Cooperstown and my son Shea was able to play with me so I would pick Shea.

Ok after the partner choice has been made each player is given a bag containing ten marbles and then they are all divided in pairs. The goal is to win every marble your opponent has, (without violence ) but, as they quickly figure out, that between themselves and the person they chose to pair up with, one of them will die. From the very first game, all players knew that most of them weren’t going to make it to the end, but this was the first time they were directly responsible for the death of someone they cared about in the competition, since the pairs were chosen by themselves.

Charlie in Arizona -sorry about the marbles Big guy!

Imagine picking your best pal to team up and then discovering one of you will die as a result of your playing. Arrrghhhhh sorry Charlie !! looks like we will play it out ! I should have picked an old player who has already lost his marbles !

With this backdrop, the marble episode had two very compelling scenes:

Initially introduced as a pickpocket, Number 067 Sae-Byeok joins the game to help her family, and over time, we discover that she's actually a North Korean defector who needs the cash to reunite her family following a dangerous border crossing where the father died and the mother was captured.

Player 067 - a defector from North Korea

She picks Ji-yeong (another young woman about whom we know very little) )as her partner .

Sae-byeok and Ji-yeong

Sae-byeok, who has been single-minded and strategic to this point slows down. Neither she nor Ji-yeong wants to play, and they decide they would rather go all-in on a fifty-fifty-chance game at the end of the countdown rather than spend their last 30 minutes lying and manipulating each other. They accept their fate with quiet dignity rather than become the worst version of themselves. Instead, they use their time to talk and get to know each other, making for the calmest moments of the game. Sae-byeok opens up about her father’s death and her mother’s capture after their family fled North Korea. She wants to use the prize money to buy a house for her brother, bring her mother to Seoul, and maybe visit Jeju Island.

Ji-yeong’s backstory is a remarkable character-building reveals. She murdered her father, a pastor, for killing her mother and abusing her as a child . She then spent most of her life in jail and was recruited to the game as soon as she was released. While both have lived difficult lives, Ji-yeong believes that with no family, she has “nowhere else to go” and is at peace with letting Sae-byeok win and continue playing. Ji-yeong gets shot in the head as Sae-byeok cries. A truly gut wrenching scene.

Ji-yeong sacrifices herself for Sae-byeok

Gi -Hun and Player 001 have paired off . But the game between Gi-hun and the old man is the most complicated. Before, Gi-hun took care of the man, sparing him from embarrassment among the guards and players as his dementia progressed. Now, Gi-hun uses the man’s declining mental health against him and feels guilty while doing it. This hurts all the more due to Gi-hun and the old man declaring themselves 'gganbu', described as friends in the neighborhood whom you share everything with, before the round begins. In the end, the old man gives his gganbu his last marble and his name: Oh Il-nam.

Player 001 recognizes his childhood neighborhood

How would one respond to that circumstance?? As for the baseball guys thrust into the marble game, I think the dads teamed up with a son would sacrifice for their son - that would be the extreme version of ‘Take one for the Team’ but this is great drama. So you have picked out your teammate and find one of you has to be ‘eliminated’. Yikes

And how, one asks does this in any way relate to baseball?

Well the essence of baseball is the pitcher-batter confrontation. The economists would describe the marble game as a zero sum game given getting shot in the head at conclusion pretty much defines the ‘zero’ result of the game.

But in baseball ,the pitcher and hitter clearly have opposing interest and both can’t win. Each pitch is a battle between opposing forces and goals with a clear winner and loser. But the good news is that if I give up a double an assassin doesn’t take me out.

On to the last episode…

After a series of ‘games’ Gi-hun and Sang-woo are the only ones left from the original 456. Yep -454 players have been ‘eliminated’. This game takes the concept of an ‘elimination game’ to a new level.

In the final Squid game Gi-hun defeats Sang-woo after a brutal fight but refuses to kill him; he begs Sang-Woo to stop the game using the third clause which allows players to vote to stop and go home without getting killed. Sang-woo instead stabs himself in the neck, and asks Gi-hun to take care of his mother before dying.

down to 2 players

Gi-hun is returned to Seoul with a bank card to access the prize money, but discovers his own mother has died. A year later, Gi-hun remains traumatized and has not touched his prize money. He receives an invitation card from his gganbu, (close friend) and finds Oh IL-nam on his death bed in a top floor of a high rise building.( It seems he didn't get shot after the marbles game)

Plyer 001 at the real End Game

Oh Il-nam reveals he created the game to entertain bored ultra-rich people like himself. He has been the mastermind creating and hosting these games for decades. He chose games he played as a child, and participated in Gi-hun’s group out of desire to have the fun he had as a child.

There is no joy in 'ultra wealth' it seems

Oh Il-nam explains to Gi-hun why he set up the games:

“Do you still believe in people? Even after what you've experienced? Do you know what the common ground between someone without money and having too much money? Life is just not fun! If you have too much money you can buy, eat and drink as much as you want, but at some point it gets boring. And at a certain point my clients started telling me that they no longer enjoy life. So we all sat down together and pondered; what else could we have fun in life? "

This ultra-wealthy guy had no joy in his life. It seems the law of diminishing returns had caught up to him as he earned so much that he got little or no marginal gain from earning more. Once people obtain things (cars, bigger houses, toys) people rarely remain satisfied with them.

Oh Il-nam recalled having joy as a child playing games with his friends. He became a player in his final Squid Game because he knew he would not have as much fun watching as playing.

None of us can relate to the problem of the ultra-wealthy getting so bored they need to come up with the squid games as a path to enjoyment. I don’t know Jeff or Elon or Bill , but they seem to be able to get up in the morning without lamenting they are not having enough fun. A billionaire we all know of- Steve Cohen bought the Mets so he has a lot of ‘fun’ to look forward to including teammates choking each other in the dugout. The NY Met are surely going to give Steve plenty of things requiring his attention so we will not have to worry about Steve getting bored.

Steve has his hands full with the Mets- oh joy!

This last scene was good drama but I was stuck with this idea that our billionaire lamented not having any joy in his life. Nor was he spreading joy to others for that matter.

As I was watching this during the week-long “Roy Hobbs World Series’ baseball tourney - I was struck by the scene as playing baseball sure seems to provide joy to the lives of the players. But there is an important qualifier. There is no joy in going out there and getting hammered. Giving up ten runs in an inning (especially if you are on the mound) while baserunners zip by as if it is a merry go round is not fun. But the good news, in baseball they don’t execute you if you give up some runs. (At least not yet)

But in this tourney and in my regular season games, the players are eager to play and enthused about the challenge of the game. There is longer term satisfaction from getting better at something such as hitting or pitching or other endeavors such as golf, tennis swimming and so on. Trying to constantly improve one’s ‘game’ forces us to evolve and it is the evolution that matters as getting better is enjoyable and getting better fast thrilling.

So I guess the message is to keep evolving one’s game whether it be baseball or a different game or a job or role as a parent or a spouse or any long term challenge that leads to improving oneself for something deemed important. That process will provide some joy- but it would help to have a 95mph fastball! So for me, unlike the Squid Game players there is wait 'till next year!

We had a good time at the tourney - there is joy in Fort Myers !

Win some and lose some but always a great time.

Below are some pictures of the lads in action: