When Anthony Alford lies his head down on his pillow at night, his thoughts are the same as they’ve ever been. He thinks about his lovely wife, Bailey, who is also a country singer known as Elsie, his two joyous children, Stella and Benjamin, and the four at-bats he battled through as a professional baseball player just a few hours earlier. But now, his head isn’t resting in Toronto, where the Blue Jays made him a second-round pick out of high school, nor Pittsburgh nor Cleveland. It’s in Suwon, South Korea, more than 7,000 miles away from where he was born and learned to play America’s favorite pastime.
Alford, who began the 2022 season with the Pittsburgh Pirates, was working his way back from injury to start the year and was called up to the big league club April 22 following his rehab assignment. But a day after lining a single against the Chicago Cubs in just his second game of the season, the Pirates faced a roster crunch and opted to designate Alford for assignment. When a player is “DFA’d,” there are essentially three outcomes. They are first placed on the waiver wire, which allows any team to claim them. If they are not claimed, they are given the choice to either accept being assigned to the minor leagues or enter free agency. Alford chose free agency and quickly signed a minor-league deal with the Cleveland Guardians.
He played just eight games for the Guardians’ Triple-A squad when he got the opportunity of a lifetime to sign with the KT Wiz of Suwon in Korean Baseball Organization (KBO).
“It was one of those things that I would much rather be over here making money as opposed to grinding in Triple-A trying to get back to the big leagues,” Alford said around midnight just a few hours after playing a game with the Wiz. “There were a lot of factors that went into it.”
Alford loves the country and has been treated exceptionally well since his arrival, but he said South Korea is completely different than America and has taken some getting used to.
“I can’t really read nothing and feel kind of illiterate,” he said with a laugh. “Not often do you get the opportunity to come experience this part of the world coming from where we’re coming from and playing baseball and making good money at the same time.”
The language barrier persists often, but both Alford and his wife each have a translator with them at all times that has made the transition a little easier.
“When I’m at the field, baseball is baseball. Obviously there were some things I had to get used to, but it’s been going well,” he said.
Alford’s very first hour in South Korea produced his first culture shock moment when he arrived at the airport. Several members of the KT Wiz organization were at the airport to greet Alford and his family, and he was gifted a bouquet of pink flowers.
“(In my head) I was like, ‘Man, I don’t want no pink flowers,’” he said with a chuckle. “I just thought it was weird having a guy hand me pink flowers. I didn’t know what to do with pink flowers at the airport, so I just handed them to my wife.”
The next thing that struck him was the overall safe environment of South Korea. While it is legal to own guns in the Asian nation, citizens may only own guns for hunting and target practice and they must be registered and stored at the local police station. South Koreans must provide legitimate reasons to even own one of those guns as well as having to renew permits regularly with physical and psychiatric assessments. The country also has security cameras all over the place, leading to far fewer crimes in public.
When Alford and his family first got to their new apartment, he recognized it was going to take them several trips to haul all of their bags inside. But his translator told him that they could just leave their bags out on the sidewalk and they could get them later once they were situated in the new place. He was puzzled.
“I told him, ‘Bruh, I’m not leaving my bags out on the street corner.’ Because in America, they’re going to come up missing,” Alford explained. “That was a big thing, just realizing how safe it is over here.”
Alford and his wife have got to experience several other countries such as Australia, Mexico and Canada, but he wanted to give his two young children the opportunity to live another country other than America. Stella absolutely loves the new environment, but the love the locals have shown Alford’s children has been even greater.
“The people over here absolutely love the babies. My daughter and my son, they turn heads every time we’re out on a walk or out in town,” Alford said.
Growing up in Mississippi, Alford is just like everyone else who is from the South — he loves the fried chicken here and think it’s the best in the world. That was until he journeyed to South Korea.
“Honestly, it’s some of the best fried chicken I’ve ever had,” he said. “Back during the Korean War, the black soldiers taught the Koreans how to fry chicken. They obviously put their own twist on it, but I’ve had some of the best friend chicken I’ve ever had. That’s saying a lot coming from South Mississippi.”
The chain restaurants there may have the same names and logos, such as McDonald’s and Pizza Hut, but the food tastes quite different. Alford said the food isn’t exactly bad, but it’s just not what he’s accustomed to. He said a lot of the food there is very sweet and spicy, but it’s all authentic. One of the bigger eye openers, though, is Starbucks.
“Their Starbucks is like on steroids over here. There’s so many different pastries and drinks,” Alford said.
The style of play in the KBO has taken some getting used to as well for Alford, who said the game hasn’t evolved as much there as it has in the States. They use old-school tactics resembling small ball, stealing bases, bunting to get baserunners over and intentionally hitting ground balls the other way rather than trying to pull and lift everything into the air for home runs, which has become the norm in Major League Baseball.
He’s had to make several adjustments at the plate with pitchers deploying a completely different strategy. In America, today’s pitchers are all about establishing their fastball with high velocities early in counts and using off-speed pitches to keep batters off balance and to produce strikeouts. But in the KBO, where there aren’t many pitchers threatening 100 mph on the radar gun, Alford sees a lot more off-speed pitches. A lot of KBO pitchers “pitch backwards,” meaning they lead with their breaking balls and use their fastball to catch hitters off guard.
“You see way more off-speed, more submarine pitchers, more splitters. Even though guys don’t throw as hard, it doesn’t make it easy to hit,” Alford explained. “It’s pretty challenging.”
Americans with power like Alford don’t get “challenged” much with fastballs over the plate at all. He said pitchers nibble at the edges of the zone against him and attempt to steal strikes, which is easier in the KBO with umpires affording pitchers a wider strike zone, according to Alford.
The preparation prior to games is a lot different as well. Even when major league clubs play on the road, they have access to their own weight room and batting cages, but it’s not like that in the KBO, which has forced Alford to alter his routine. He said that now he gets to the ballpark an hour and a half before the game, but when he was in the big leagues stateside, he would get to the stadium five hours before first pitch.
Although it took him some time to get used to the different style of play, the 28-year-old is putting together an impressive season in his first year in the KBO. Through Tuesday’s action, Alford has a .267 average, .806 on-base plus slugging percentage, nine home runs and 39 RBI through 59 games, helping lead the KT Wiz to a 67-51-2 record, which is fourth best in the KBO.
The Columbia native is far from the only player with big league experience in the KBO. There are several players he played with in 2019 in Triple-A that are now in the KBO, including Socrates Brito, Thomas Pannone, Wilmer Font and Matt Dermody, and several former big-league stars such as Yasiel Puig and Seung-hwan Oh.
Every game brings a different level of intensity to it, and the fans treat regular season games like Americans do playoff games. Alford said the stadiums are alive at all times with fans cheering from start to finish regardless of the score.
At this point, the 6-foot-1 left fielder isn’t sure if he’s going to return to America and pursue the big leagues again next season or if he’s going to stay in Asia for another year. He said he ultimately wants to play in MLB again, but he will wait to revisit his opportunities in the offseason.
For now, he just wants to enjoy the ride and take in what it’s like to be among the most famous people in the country.
“They’ve made me feel like somewhat of a rock star over here. Just the love they show here in Suwon, you kind of somewhat become a household name. People will see me at a traffic light and start yelling or see me around town,” he said. “Those are the memories (I’m going to remember).”
