As a huge lifelong baseball fan, I can’t even start to count the number of games I’ve attended — at any level, from Little League games that elementary school friends played in to many MLB games in support of my hometown Minnesota Twins. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed all of them — I love watching sports just for the sake of watching sports as much as anyone I’ve ever met — but admittedly, the fan experience at baseball games is definitely less engaging and exciting than in other sports.

And indeed, with the newest generation of American sports fans increasingly turning to basketball and football — sports with constant action and no breaks — it becomes easy to write off the baseball experience as largely monotonous and dull. You’d better have three hours’ worth of good conversational material at your disposal, because you’ll certainly need it at any baseball games you go to.

The Commissioner’s Office is certainly aware of that issue and is looking to up the pace of the game, starting with the introduction of the pitch clock at the Double-A and Triple-A levels this season to better the fan experience by cutting down on “wasted time” between the action.

I really do appreciate the sentiment, but I think it’s a step in the wrong direction.

The game of baseball is unique in that the inherent downtime between the action allows for an ability to fully process the situations, analyze the game in real-time and make adjustments in a way that is unparalleled in any other sport. Sure, it adds to the length of the game and seems to make it drag on in low-leverage situations, but when, say, there’s a batter digging into the box with two outs in the bottom of the ninth with a runner on second, or the pitcher on the mound is a few outs away from a no-hitter, every one of those seconds is an added drop of the dramatic to the situation — and in baseball, the lack of a running clock like in football or basketball makes the accumulation of that drama much more meaningful. It’s what makes the game special.

I think it’s a mistake to take that away.

The best fan experience I’ve ever had at a baseball game wasn’t actually in the United States — it was overseas, in Seoul, at a game between the SK Wyverns and my dad’s beloved LG Twins of the Korea Baseball Organization.

The difference wasn’t in the game itself — it was in the teams’ active efforts to engage the fans.

Each team had a guy standing on top of its dugout with a megaphone leading the cheers of the crowd, with a personalized chant for every player that stepped up to the plate or every pitcher that ran in from the bullpen.

At first, I thought it was tacky and overdone, but really, as the game progressed, it started to grow on me, and I found myself joining in and getting caught up in the action as well. Because really, in Korean baseball, there’s absolutely no downtime and no opportunity to not get engaged in the game — when you have two opposing sections of thousands of people screaming at each other at the top of their lungs throughout all nine innings, it’s kind of hard to not get involved, even as somebody who doesn’t know any of the players in the game.

And seriously, when I mean nonstop action, I mean nonstop. It didn’t even stop for a two-hour rain delay. The teams got fans to wait out a two-hour rain delay by improvising a breakdancing competition between the mascots. Isn’t that nuts? Who wouldn’t want to see Mr. Met having a breakdancing competition with Lou Seal? Nobody, that’s who.

It’s that kind of thinking outside the box that I think the Korean Baseball Organization does really well, and it’s something that Major League Baseball could certainly learn from. Obviously, we’re talking about two different crowds here — the variety of fans at MLB games is certainly more diverse than those at KBO games, and there really isn’t going to be one fix-all solution to get MLB fans more engaged in games.

But it certainly wouldn’t hurt to try and engage fans beyond just playing some clapping tracks or sound bites every so often to try and get some chants or cheers going — maybe getting some personalized cheers for star players going first and milking those for all they’re worth — and ultimately finding the fine line between what really gets the crowd going and what can be too pushy.

If I can get fired up for players that I’ve never before seen in my life, think about what it could do for fans that live or die by the teams that they support.

The real reason that Do-Hyoung Park enjoys watching Minnesota Twins games is not because they are his hometown team, but because of his own self-admitted love for watching minor league baseball. To talk to Do about how the Twins have cut down on “wasted time” by reducing the amount of meaningful baseball played to zero, e-mail him at dpark027 ‘at’ stanford.edu.