When former South Korean baseball MVP Lee Jung-hoo signed with the San Francisco Giants in December, he became the second player from the country to join the National League West team.
The first was Hwang Jae-gyun, who had an 18-game cup of coffee by the bay in 2017. Hwang is back in the Korea Baseball Organization (KBO), now plying his trade with the KT Wiz.
Even though Hwang, 36, only had a short stint, he would seem to be the ideal person to impart some wisdom or advice to Lee, 11 years Hwang’s junior.
Hwang, though, begged to differ.
“Who am I to give Jung-hoo any advice? He’s going to pass me in games played in no time,” Hwang said Wednesday with a smile at Incheon International Airport, west of Seoul, after coming home from spring training in Japan.
“He only needs a couple of home runs and he will have more big league homers than I did,” Hwang went on. “I really don’t have anything to tell him.”
Hwang had one home run, five RBIs and a .154 batting average in those 18 games. Lee, who signed for si
x years at US$113 million, has already been anointed as the Giants’ starting center fielder and leadoff man. He has hit safely in all five spring training games so far, and homered in his first game, too.
But Hwang said he’s proud of one record he holds that Lee will never be able to break.
Hwang went deep in his very first major league game on June 28, 2017. At 29 and 335 days, Hwang became the oldest Giant ever to homer in his first big league game.
“I bet no one will ever break that record,” Hwang cracked.
As Lee, the 2022 KBO MVP, left home, the Korean league welcomed back its 2006 MVP in Ryu Hyun-jin, left-hander for the Hanwha Eagles. Ryu first pitched for the Eagles from 2006 to 2012 and then spent the next 11 years in the majors before reuniting with the old team last month.
Ryu and Hwang were drafted together in 2005, and they are among the few players still active from that class.
“He’s such a great pitcher, but he’s a completely different pitcher now than when I last faced him here some 10 ye
ars ago,” Hwang said. “We are both older now, and I have to regard him as a brand new pitcher.”
The two went head-to-head once in the majors, on July 30, 2017. Hwang went 0-for-2 with a strikeout against Ryu, who was then pitching for the Los Angeles Dodgers.
Source: Yonhap News Agency