South Korean police join LAPD baseball invitational

September 9, 2015
A player from South Korea's Gyeonggi Provincial Police Agency's baseball team high fives another policeman at the LAPD's Wild Wild West Invitational Tuesday. (Park Sang-hyuk/Korea Times)

A player from South Korea’s Gyeonggi Provincial Police Agency’s baseball team high fives another policeman at the LAPD’s Wild Wild West Invitational Tuesday. (Park Sang-hyuk/Korea Times)

It’s the Wild, Wild West for a group of police and fire department baseball teams from around the world — including the Athletes, a team from the Gyeonggi Provincial Police Agency in South Korea — gathered in Los Angeles this week.

Held by the Los Angeles Police Department, the Wild Wild West LAPD Baseball Invitational competition will last Sept. 8 to 12 at Sierra Canyon High School and in El Cariso Regional Park.

The Athletes, comprised of 12 players, won a national police baseball competition in Korea in May and were invited as South Korean representatives.

Other participating teams include departments from Orange County, New York, San Francisco and the SoCal Lookouts Police Team.

“Coming to America to strengthen cooperation with other policemen through baseball is meaningful,” said Lee Choong-wan, captain of the Korean team. “Although we’re amateur teams, we’ll try our best to play exciting matches.”

The Koreans saw a 7-9 loss to the NYPD Tuesday.

Proceeds from games will go toward the LAPD team’s youth programs.