Correspondent Moon Dae-hyeon = For Kang Baek-ho (24, KT Wiz), who is in charge of one axis of the Korean baseball team’s batting line, the Tokyo Summer Olympics two years ago is a painful memory.
Korea suffered a ‘no medal’ humiliation by losing to the Dominican Republic in the baseball bronze medal match. At the time, in a situation where defeat was dark, Kang Baek-ho was chewing gum with an expressionless expression in the dugout.메이저사이트
The batting average of the tournament was 0.308 (7 hits in 26 at-bats) and 4 RBIs, which was not bad, but it was clearly disappointing in terms of attitude. The public, who had admired Kang Baek-ho’s outstanding skills before, turned their backs on him after this incident.
Kang Baek-ho, who had a difficult time with his team due to an injury last year, faced the 2023 season with a whopping 47.3% annual salary cut.
Kang Baek-ho, who is going through a bitter period in many ways, was selected to the final list of the 2023 World Baseball Classic (WBC) and got an opportunity to restore his honor as a national representative.
Kang Baek-ho, who joined the national team on the 14th (local time), is sweating heavily at the Kino Sports Complex in Tucson, Arizona, USA.
Kang Baek-ho met with reporters after the national team training was over on the 20th and emphasized, “I apologize once again for showing a bad performance (during the Olympics),” and “I will not show that in this competition.”
He continued, “I am preparing with a sense of responsibility as much as I represent our country. I will prepare better for the remaining training period and show a good image.”
Kang Baek-ho is currently showing a good hitting feeling. Kang Baek-ho, who overcame the wall in each batting practice, stood out with 4 hits and 1 home run in 9 at-bats in two practice games.
He said, “I raised my condition earlier by increasing the amount of training than before. I am preparing well,” and said, “The batting order is not important.
The match that draws attention in this tournament is the Korea-Japan match to be held at the Tokyo Dome on March 10th. The Japanese national team, which is known as the “nemesis,” includes many big leaguers such as Yu Darvish (San Diego Padres) and Shohei Ohtani (LA Angels), so a match against Korea is expected.
However, Kang Baek-ho did not seem to be conscious of Japan. He said, “There are many major leaguers in Japan, but there are major leaguers in our team as well.”
At the same time, he said, “I prepared hard with the KT batting coach even before the national team was summoned.”