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An emergency meeting on heatwave measures for the KBO League is held at the Korea Baseball Organization (KBO) headquarters in Gangnam-gu, Seoul on the 6th. / Yonhap

Record-breaking heat has finally forced professional baseball's regular season to a halt. After canceling all games for two straight days out of concern for players' and fans' safety, the KBO League will effectively be on a "forced summer break" through this weekend.

The Korea Baseball Organization (KBO) held an emergency executive committee meeting on the 6th at the Baseball Hall in Gangnam-gu, Seoul, attended by team general managers from all 10 clubs and Jang Dong-chul, secretary-general of the Korea Professional Baseball Players Association, and decided to cancel all 15 games scheduled from the 7th through the 9th. Those games had been set to take place across five stadiums nationwide, including Jamsil, Suwon, Daegu, Changwon, and Daejeon.

With all KBO League games already canceled on the 5th and 6th due to the heat, this latest decision brings the total number of games postponed this season due to extreme heat to 30 — a scale far beyond the occasional rainout. It is also highly unusual for professional baseball to halt its entire league schedule for three straight days over heat concerns.

The KBO plans to resume the league on the 11th, but will push back game start times to 7 p.m. on both weekdays and weekends for the time being. An exception will be made for Gocheok Sky Dome, where weekday games will start at 7 p.m., Saturday games at 6 p.m., and Sunday games can start as early as 2 p.m. depending on broadcast scheduling. A "cooling time" break will also be newly introduced mid-game to allow players and fans to escape the heat.

The bigger issue is what happens with the canceled games. The 30 lost games will need to be rescheduled, adding to an already tight second-half calendar — inevitably increasing the burden of travel and roster management for each club. In particular, as the race for final standings intensifies, the resulting increase in consecutive games raises the possibility that the rescheduling could work against certain teams unevenly.

For players, the situation cuts both ways. Avoiding a grueling stretch of games in extreme heat clearly helps reduce fatigue and injury risk. But teams like kt wiz, who had built momentum in the pennant race, risk losing their rhythm, while LG Twins — mired in a losing streak in the second half and now down to third place — gain valuable time to regroup.

The heat measures the KBO and its clubs have rolled out this weekend look set to become a major variable not just for safety, but for team performance and the standings race for the rest of the season.

                                                                                                        Cheon Hyun-bin