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He said he would like us to think of it as steadily progressing rather than going up.”
Kim Ha-seong (28, San Diego Padres) won the Major League Baseball (MLB) National League Gold Glove (GG) Utility Player category on the 6th. He was the first Korean player, and the first to expand his scope to become an Asian infielder. It is an achievement that has no shortage of praise for him as the best infielder in Korean baseball history.
It wasn't the best from the beginning. Ha-seong Kim has always experienced competition and reached the top after endless growth. During his days at Yatap High School, his junior Park Hyo-jun received more attention. He entered professional baseball as the 29th pick in the third round of the rookie draft. Ha-Seong Kim wasn't even Rookie of the Year. But he grew into a better player every year, and he hit his first 30 home runs in the big leagues before making it to the MLB.
Is it because Kim Ha-seong has always been vertical and ‘upward-oriented’? For Ha-seong Kim, his first season in MLB (batting average 0.202, 8 home runs) was close to frustration. He confessed to himself that he suffered from alopecia areata because he could not cope with fastballs traveling at speeds exceeding 160 km/h. It was the first fall that Kim Ha-seong, who had been soaring every year, experienced.
Kim Ha-seong, who held a press conference commemorating the Gold Glove award on the 20th, said, "My whole life, in sports (baseball), there are only ups and downs, and (I) only thought that (I) had to go up." He added, "I experienced a big failure in my first season in MLB. It was the hardest time in my entire career. “It was time. I played baseball only with the thought of going up, so when I fell, I couldn’t handle it,” he confessed.
Changed my perspective. I realized it wasn't a crash, but a stoppage. This is thanks to the experienced advice of senior advisor Park Chan-ho of San Diego. Chan-ho Park experienced far more failures than Ha-seong Kim. He entered the MLB faster than Kim Ha-seong and suffered failure from his first year. After much hard work and hard work, he made it to the big leagues. After moving as a free agent (FA), he was shaken again due to poor performance and a back injury. Instead of giving up, he worked hard and achieved his goal of 124 wins in the big league.
Ha-seong Kim said, “Senior Park Chan-ho told me that he wanted me to think of it as steadily progressing rather than going up,” and “He said it’s not about falling, but about pausing for a moment and then moving forward again. That advice was a great help in digesting the long season.”
As Park Chan-ho said, Kim Ha-seong endured, and although it was slower than in the KBO league, he gradually adapted and grew. This season, in his third year, he was a Silver Slugger candidate in the utility player category with 17 home runs and 38 stolen bases not only in defense but also in batting. He also became the regular number one hitter in San Diego, which is home to prominent All-Star players such as Manny Machado, Fernando Tatis Jr., Xander Bogaerts, and Juan Soto. This is thanks to stopping and then moving forward again.