There was no white noise. That was one of the first things Tyler Wilson noticed when he took the mound April 27 for his first exhibition start of the 2020 Korea Baseball Organization season. He could hear his spikes shuffling in the dirt, the give of the rubber as he pushed off from the mound. The murmur of the batter in the box was sharp, as were the conversations in the dugout. Usually, all of these sounds would be drowned out by the din of the crowd in the 16,000-plus capacity Gocheok Sky Dome in Seoul, South Korea, where Wilson’s LG Twins were facing the Kiwoom Heroes.

“When I pitched, I could hear so many new sounds,” he says. “You hear everything so clearly. … In between innings feels strange because it’s so quiet, you’re so aware of everything.”

Playing to an empty stadium is unsettling in any context. The lulls between action become more pronounced. Every motion is heightened, every noise is amplified. But in the KBO, subtracting the crowd strips the league of its ethos. The 10-team, 38-year-old league is sometimes known to international audiences by its bat flips; the KBO’s real defining characteristic is its fans, who regularly spend all game on their feet, regardless of the score.

Jared Hoying is a chatty outfielder who often calls out words of encouragement to his Hanwha Eagles teammates. His home stadium, in Daejeon, South Korea, is the smallest in the league, with a capacity of 13,000, and when the crowd is at full tilt, “it’s like a soccer crowd thrown into a little baseball stadium,” he says. His usual quips from the outfield are no longer muffled by the noise of the fans, and now socially distanced stuffed animals fill every other seat behind home plate. The cheerleaders are still there, as is a drummer, but it’s no replacement for the usual clamor of game day.

[Read Jacqueline Kantor's piece about the return of the Korean Baseball Organization and what MLB can learn from its comeback.]