The Doosan Bears () are a South Korean professional baseball team based in

Seoul Seoul, officially Seoul Special Metropolitan City, is the capital city, capital and largest city of South Korea. The broader Seoul Metropolitan Area, encompassing Seoul, Gyeonggi Province and Incheon, emerged as the world's List of cities b ...

. Founded in 1982, they are a member of the

KBO League The KBO League () is a professional baseball league in South Korea. The league comprises ten teams. The KBO League was founded with six franchises in 1982 and is the most popular sports league in South Korea. The Kia Tigers are the most success ...

. The Bears have won six Korean Series titles (1982, 1995, 2001, 2015, 2016, and 2019) and play their home games at Seoul's Jamsil Baseball Stadium.

History

The club was founded in

Daejeon Daejeon (; ) is South Korea's list of cities in South Korea, fifth-largest metropolis, with a population of nearly 1.5 million. Located in a central lowland valley between the Sobaek Mountains and the Geum River, the city is known both as a ...

in as the OB Bears, with the

Oriental Brewery Oriental Brewery or OB () is a South Korean brewery currently owned by AB InBev, and initially founded by Doosan Group. History In 1933, Showa Kirin Brewery (Kirin Company) established Oriental Brewery. Oriental Brewery was privatized in 1952 ...

as their owners. OB Bears were the first team to be founded in the

. The

Doosan Group Doosan Group () is a South Korean multinational conglomerate corporation. In 2009, the corporation was placed in the ''Fortune'' Global 500 index. It is the parent company of Bobcat and Škoda Power. Doosan Group is the oldest running company ...

initially wanted a base in

from 1982, as their company was founded in Seoul and had no connection to

Chungcheong Province Chungcheong Province (; ) was one of the Eight Provinces (Korea), eight provinces of Korea during the Joseon Dynasty. Chungcheong was located in the southwest of Korea. The provincial capital was located at Gongju, which had been the capital o ...

. But since there was no corporation that could establish a baseball team in Daejeon, Doosan agreed to play in Daejeon for three years before returning to Seoul. In , the team moved to their current home in Seoul. The OB Bears were officially renamed the Doosan Bears in , after Oriental Brewery was sold to

InBev InBev () was a brewing company that resulted from the merger between Belgium-based company Interbrew and Brazilian brewer AmBev which took place in 2004. It existed independently until the acquisition of Anheuser-Busch in 2008, which formed Anheu ...

and the Doosan Group assumed ownership. The Bears won the inaugural Korean Series in 1982 by defeating the Samsung Lions to become the first KBO League champion. Between 2015 and 2021, the Bears appeared in seven consecutive Korean Series championships, winning three of the series in 2015, 2016 and 2019.

Team colors

The main colors of the team are navy blue and white, with red as the secondary color. From 1999 to 2009, yellow was used instead as the secondary color, before the team returned in 2010 to the iconic dark blue and red combination of the original OB Bears.

Mascot

The Doosan Bears mascot is a bear named Cheolwoong (철웅). Its biggest feature is that it embodies the bear, the symbolic animal of Doosan Bears, as a dynamic robot character. It emphasized strength and a future-oriented image.

Season-by-season records

Team

Current roster

Retired numbers

The Bears have retired numbers 21 and 54. The number 21 is retired in honour of pitcher Park Chul-soon, who won the KBO League Most Valuable Player Award, the Pitching Triple Crown, and the Korean Series Most Valuable Player Award in 1982. The number 54 is in memory of catcher Kim Young-shin, who committed suicide while still a young player.

Managers

References

;General * ;Specific

External links

Official website
{{Doosan Group KBO League teams Baseball teams established in 1982 Baseball teams in Seoul

Bears Bears are carnivoran mammals of the family Ursidae (). They are classified as caniforms, or doglike carnivorans. Although only eight species of bears are extant, they are widespread, appearing in a wide variety of habitats throughout most o ...

1982 establishments in South Korea