The city that introduced America to Korean BBQ food trucks will also be the city that gives America its first Korean baseball broadcast.
That's Los Angeles — home to Hollywood, the Dodgers and a thriving Korean community.
According to a report in the L.A. Times, the Dodgers plan to broadcast their games in three languages — English, Spanish and Korean — when their new local TV deal begins in 2014, making it the first trilingual MLB team.
That Dodgers TV deal, believed to be in the neighborhood of $7 billion, isn't finalized yet, but would create a 25-year partnership with Time Warner Cable. It would set new heights for TV deals by baseball teams, as Yahoo! Sports' Jeff Passan explained when news of the deal broke.
The matter of language, though, is an interesting new wrinkle. One that makes perfect sense when you consider that Los Angeles has Koreatown, which L.A. Weekly recently called "America's Hippest Neighborhood" and the Dodgers just spent big to import Ryu Hyun-jin from South Korea.
We're just hoping Psy — Mr. "Gangnam Style" himself — doesn't get a gig as the color commentator.
Spring training is here. Stretch out with us.
Follow @MikeOz and @bigleaguestew, on Twitter, along with the BLS Facebook page.
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