REV senior David Barela, above, pitches last year

Redlands East Valley will get a taste for international baseball when it plays an exhibition against the best team from Seoul, South Korea.
REV’s game against Yatap High School is set for Thursday and will serve as the final game of a nine-game, 40-day tour of California by the South Korean team, made up of players from ages 16 to 18. It will be the third San Bernardino County team that Yatap has played.
Yatap is the official guest of the San Bernardino-based American Sports University and is making its second straight tour of Southern California. On Friday, Yatap swept a doubleheader from Carter, winning 6-1 and 14-6.
“We wanted to do this for a lot of reasons,” REV coach James Cordes said. “First, it’s because of the high level of baseball we will see and we want to see any differences in the game they have. And just to get the cultural experience on baseball from a team that is a world away from us. We will field teams, but how great will it be just to experience the cultural exchange.”
Yatap has posted wins over San Bernardino (3-0) and Carter. It has also played Thousand Oaks, Mission Hills Alemany, Arcadia, Placentia Valencia and Beaumont.
Today, Yatap plays at Placentia Valencia and at Beaumont on Tuesday.
“My guess is that we will see mistake-free baseball, high on the fundamentals,” Cordes said. “The game will move pretty quickly for them. It’s going to be fun for us to play at a level that is pretty high.”
Yatap made its Southern California debut during last year’s tour through the Los Angeles area. In 2011, the Oakland A’s signed Yatap catcher Seong-Min Kim, who played for the A’s farm team in the New York-Penn League last season.
— Ed Castro

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