SSG Landers’ starter Wilmer Font tossed nine perfect innings to open the new South Korean baseball season on Saturday, just not quite enough to be credited with a historic perfect game.

Font sat down all 27 batters he faced against the NC Dinos, but the Landers needed 10 innings to beat them 4-0 at Changwon NC Park in Changwon, some 400 kilometers southeast of Seoul.

The teams were tied at 0-0 after nine innings, and the Landers scored four runs in the top of the 10th inning. It would have been a comfortable lead for Font to try to lock down the perfect game, but the Landers went to reliever Kim Taek-hyeong to begin the bottom 10th with Font having thrown 104 pitches.

Font, back for his second season in the Korea Baseball Organization (KBO), struck out nine batters.

The KBO is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year and it has never had a perfect game. There have been 14 no-hitters.

Kim Kwang-hyun has left the St. Louis Cardinals and will return to South Korea on a record four-year contract.

The left-handed pitcher will rejoin his old club, which is now known as the SSG Landers, in the Korean Baseball Organization.

The club issued a statement Tuesday saying the deal is worth up to 15.1 billion won ($12.3 million) over four seasons, the largest contract in the league’s history.

Kim pitched for the SK Wyverns, as the Landers were previously known, from 2007 to 2019 before joining the Cardinals on a two-year contract. The 33-year-old Kim became a free agent after the 2021 season.

He was the KBO’s regular season MVP in 2008 and won four Korean Series titles with the Incheon-based club.

In two seasons with St. Louis, Kim went 10-7 with a 2.98 ERA in 35 games, including 28 starts. He began the 2020 season as the Cardinals closer, recording a save in his first Major League appearance at the age of 32.