(Story by Marco Stoovelaar)
 KIA Tigers and Roger Bernadina begin Korean Series with loss
Nederlands
 GWANGJU (South Korea) -
KIA Tigers, the winner of the regular season in the KBO League, opened the best-of-seven Korean Series on Wednesday-evening (October 25) with a 5-3 loss against reigning champion Doosan Bears, which won the title the previous two years.
Dutch outfielder Roger Bernadina homered for the Tigers, but the Bears hold onto the lead.
Game 2 will be played on Thursday, also at the home stadium of the Tigers in Gwangju.
Before the start of the game at Gwangju-Kia Champions Field, the ceremonial first pitch was thrown by Jae-in Moon, who is the President of South Korea since May of this year and is baseball-fan.
American righthander Dustin Nippert started for Doosan Bears.
The 36-year old Nippert plays for the Bears since 2011.
Last season, he was the Most Valuable Player of the KBO League.
Before coming to South Korea, he pitched in the Major League for Arizona Diamondbacks (2005-2007) and Texas Rangers (2008-2010).
This season, he was 14-8 with a 4.06 ERA.
Héctor Noesí was the starting pitcher for KIA Tigers.
The 30-year old Dominican righthander also played in the Major League, before joining Tigers in 2016.
Noesí pitched for New York Yankees (2011), Seattle Mariners (2012-2014), Texas Rangers (2014) and Chicago White Sox (2014-2015).
The righthander had a good season with Tigers, as he was 20-5 with a 3.48 ERA.
Doosan Bears opened the score in the top of the fourth inning when Jae-won Oh walked with the bases loaded.
With one out, Noesí got the bases loaded then walked Oh with two outs.
In the top of the fifth inning, the Bears rallied for four runs.
The second run was added on an one-out single by Kun-woo Park.
Hereafter, Jae-hwan Kim and Jae-il Oh hit back-to-back homeruns to lift the lead to 5-0.
In the bottom of the fifth inning, KIA Tigers got back into the game when Roger Bernadina hit a 3-run homerun into deep rightfield off of Nippert, who threw six solid innings.
But that was to be it for the Tigers, who were held scoreless in the remainder of the game.
(October 25)
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