EWC: What was one Korean sports story during 2008 that you thought didn’t get as much media attention as you thought it should have?
Jee-ho: First off—Happy holiday wishes to all EWC visitors.
The Beijing Olympics were easily the largest sporting event of the year and Korea had its all-time best performance with 13 gold medals. Every one of the medals was significant, but Park Tae-hwan’s swimming gold and the baseball gold overshadowed everything else.
One gold medalist that I think should have received more attention was shooter Jin Jong-oh, who won 50-meter pistol gold and 10-meter air pistol silver. That silver was the first medal that Korea won in Beijing, but later on the same day, judo’s Choi Min-ho got the nation’s first gold.
Check out the JoongAng Daily’s Top 10 Korean Sports Stories of 2008.
And before anyone could appreciate Jin’s gold, weightlifter Lee Bae-young became the nation’s darling without winning a medal. He’s the guy who suffered leg cramps during an attempt but never let go of the barbell even as his knees buckled under him and he fell to the floor. So Jin quickly became a forgotten man, despite his two medals.
Jin’s quest to gold had all the makings of a dramatic story because of how far he’d come. At the 2004 Athens Olympics, Jin headed into the 50-meter pistol final as the first-round leader but had shots of 7.6 and 6.9 (out of 10.9. Scores below 9.8 ish at the Olympic level will get you out of medal contention fast) to settle for the silver.
So he spent the next four years fighting his demons and nerves, and answering questions about Athens. After Jin won silver in Beijing, there were whispers that maybe this guy wasn’t equipped to win an Olympic gold. And even in winning the gold, Jin actually hit an 8.2 in his final shot to win by 0.2 points. I almost got the sense that he did that on purpose.
Here was a regular guy (shooters aren’t physical specimen, of course) who overcame nerves and personal demons to finally win the gold. And before his gold medal winning shooting, TV stations carried a pre-taped interview with his gorgeous wife, who urged him on to stay focused and take one shot at a time and said no matter how he’d do in Beijing she would still love him very much. Great stuff.
If Jin were playing a more marquee sport, then he would have attracted more coverage. But as it is, most sports journalists watch shooting once every four years.
EWC: Two part question — did you think the KBO players busted for online gambling got more media attention than it deserved? What would you say was the biggest Korean sports scandal over the past decade?
Jee-ho: I am answering these questions a few days after you sent them and there was some new development on this gambling scandal. Of 16 alleged players, 13 walked way with no punishment and three got what I would call slap on their wrists—fine between 10 million won and 15 million won, or about $7,700 to $11,550 U.S. Only one of the three, former U.S. minor league outfielder Chae Tae-in of the Samsung Lions, was the active player and the two others had already been released by the Lions by the time the investigation went underway.
I think this actually received less media attention than it should have. Some would say ball players go online and gamble all the time and these ones were the unlucky ones who happened to get caught. Or maybe it was just a witch hunt of sort going after the Samsung players because the Lions are the wealthiest team in the league.
But for all the popularity that baseball enjoyed this year—from the Olympic gold to drawing 5 million fans for the first time in 12years—the players haven’t always been the best behaved athletes off the field. About three years ago, some players and even coaches were hooked to the arcade slot machine game called ‘Sea Story’ and many were said to have ventured out late at nights on road trips and spent hours in back alley arcades.
I think this was a great opportunity to make an example of players getting into trouble but I guess Seoul prosecutors didn’t think their online gambling warranted much in the way of punishment. Some others alleged in similar charges, including the ex-ball player Kang Byung-kyu, were indicted without physical detention.
The biggest sports scandal over the past decade by far is the military dodging scandal involving KBO players in the fall of 2004. In all, 51 players were suspended for the remainder of the season after they were caught doctoring (no pun intended) their medical records by bribing doctors.
Cho Jin-ho, the one-time Boston Red Sox pitcher, was among dozens of players arrested. He and Lotte Giants’ captain Cho Sung-hwan, the 2008 Golden Glove winner, served six months in jail and then had to do two years of the military service. That both are still playing ball is no mean feat (and I don’t mean this sarcastically).
Among other notables, the Heroes’ lefty Ma Il-young was charged but not arrested. Ditto for Doosan Bears’ slick-fielding shortstop Son Si-heon, who won the 2005 Golden Glove and then did his two years of service. Son will re-join the Bears for next season.
In 2004, I was doing my army service. This scandal really upset me because baseball was (and is) my favorite sport and I hated that people suddenly started seeing baseball as the corrupted sport. Also, when you’re doing the service and see celebrities who look perfectly healthy try to dodge their way out, it’s really infuriating.
EWC: Who was the most disappointing Korean sportsman or woman of 2008?
Jee-ho: Since this is a baseball blog and I am a huge fan of the game, I will go with a baseball player. Kim Byung-hyun (remember him?) was nowhere to be seen in 2008 because, well, he wasn’t with any team.
After the Pittsburgh Pirates released him during spring training, no one picked him up. He had a decent season with the Florida Marlins last year and you would think he could still be a serviceable major league pitcher. The Pirates could have used Kim in 2008, though they really could have used anyone on that staff. But this offseason, they went out and signed two Indian players who won a reality TV show contest and who’d never thrown a baseball in their lives.
Maybe Kim is too intent on starting that he’s scared away teams that would prefer to use him in the bullpen. Hasn’t he realized he’s not good enough to be a consistent starter at the major league level? But his delivery is still quirky enough and his slider still has some bite that in limited innings, Kim can be an effective pitcher. After hitters have seen the normal, overhand delivery for six innings, Kim would come on and pitch submarine. Younger players who never faced him earlier this decade would find it difficult to adjust their eye level in just one at-bat. That’s my theory anyway.
What is it with veteran Korean pitchers not wanting to pitch in relief? I think Park Chan-ho would rather throw Frisbees for life than pitch out of the pen. I think Park, Kim, and Co. are too wired in thinking that starting is the only thing that matters in pitching because they’d spent their entire amateur career starting. Pitching in relief must somehow make them feel less important.
Well, the important thing is you’re pitching in the majors at all. How many players would kill for the opportunity in the big leagues, regardless of the roles?
Yes, Kim is a proud pitcher and if he weren’t so competitive, he wouldn’t have come back mentally to continue pitching after the disastrous 2001 World Series with Arizona. But if he’d only look at himself in the mirror, Kim wouldn’t see a major league starter, but a serviceable major league pitcher—albeit on middling teams.
EWC: I think in each of the five years I’ve lived here that soccer has gotten less popular. Am I wrong in thinking this? If I’m right has it bottomed out or is it dependent on the national team captivating the general public again?
Jee-ho: You’re absolutely right about the decreasing popularity. Though K-League’s attendance figures are solid, some teams are known to embellish their attendance numbers anyway and the league figures are inflated by a few really popular teams, like Suwon and FC Seoul.
Those two teams are consistently the two biggest attractions in Korean soccer but when they met in the K-League final this year, they didn’t draw as many fans as they were expected to. They attracted over 55,000 fans last season to set the record for most in a Korean professional sports game of any kind and that was a regular season game.
The most popular theory on the downward trend in K-League’s popularity is that Korean soccer fans are increasingly getting spoiled by top-quality soccer from Premier League and other European leagues. Cable stations carry live games every weekend and even untrained soccer eyes would have to agree that a Premier League game is infinitely more entertaining than a K-League match. It’s unfair to compare those two leagues, but the fact is fans would rather watch English soccer because there’s more scoring and Premier Leaguers are more skilled and make their games more fun to watch even without goals.
The reason people still watch the national team is that it features star players, especially those who play in Europe such as Park Ji-sung of Manchester United. But even national teams have trouble filling the seats. It’s not 2002 anymore. Korea’s reaching the semifinal at the 2002 World Cup looks more like a fluke, a once-in-a-lifetime deal by the day. It’s possible that we’ll never see Korea reach even the quarterfinals in the next four, five World Cups.
I personally think soccer is an underrated sport. And like a lot of other sports, soccer is best appreciated in person. I wish more people took their time to attend a soccer match. But if they’d rather stay home and watch Premier League on TV, I’d understand that, too.
EWC: Can you look at the JoongAng Daily crystal ball? How about a bold prediction for 2009?
Jee-ho: Let me throw out five crazy baseball predictions for 2009. Maybe we can come back to this at the end of next year and see how many I had right.
Kim Hyun-soo hits .320 with 25 home runs and 107 RBI, wins the MVP and leads the Doosan Bears past the Lotte Giants to the Korean Series title.
SK manager Kim Sung-keun retires from baseball after the Wyverns finish fourth in the regular season and are knocked out of the first round of the playoffs by the Giants.
Kia’s Yoon Seok-min beats Kim Gwang-hyun for the pitching triple crown: Yoon wins 19 games but Kia ends up with only 48 wins.
It’s another lethargic offensive year for the KBO. A year after only two players, Hanwha’s Kim Tae-kyun and Lotte’s Karim Garcia, hit at least 30 homers, Garcia is the only one to do it in 2009, hitting it on the number.
Choi Hee-seop complains of back pains in spring training and misses a few days, comes back in time for the season opener, hits three home runs (Hello, Brad Radke!), pulls his groin rounding third base on the third homer, and goes out for season.