[Sports view]Park’s dream for amateurs left undone
It’s always sad to see the athletes you grew up watching retire from sports, and no matter how old you are, it can make you feel a bit older when your favorite players move on to become coaches and managers.But when one of them passes away, not from natural causes but in an accident, it’s a whole different story. And the tragic news last week that former baseball pitcher Park Dong-hee was killed at 39 in a car crash in Busan hit me in an entirely different way than news of retirement would have.
I was depressed the whole day. Then I started piecing together my memories of the 1992 Korean Series, when Park, then with the Lotte Giants, won two games and saved another to win the most valuable player honors.
I was playing little league baseball then, and corny as this seems, my love of the game was likely at its purest. There was no fantasy baseball, at least none that I knew of, and no half-hour pregame or postgame show to overwhelm a young fan.
And Park, though he wasn’t my favorite player back then, is certainly one of the players that represented baseball during that period in my life. Because of that, to learn of Park’s death was akin to losing a piece of my childhood memories, in a way very different from a player’s retirement.
It would be easy to eulogize Park and go on about what a great pitcher he was. But that’s already been done in other media outlets over the last few days.
And the fact is that one would be hard pressed to argue that he was a great player. Park won only 59 games and had 58 saves in his 12-year career that was cut short by a series of elbow injuries. For the most part, he failed to live up to lofty expectations.
But say this about the man: At a time when a fastball clocked at 140 kilometers per hour (87 miles per hour) was considered blazing, Park threw the ball at 156 kilometers (97 miles) in his rookie year when he was just 22 years old.
Actually, his fastball consistently hit 150 kilometers in high school. In a national prep tournament in 1985, Park did not allow a run in five games in Busan High School’s title run.
Park then won 24 games in his first two professional seasons, and won the Korean Series MVP in his third year. But it was mostly downhill from there.
Park’s heavy workload in high school and college was an obvious cause of his premature decline as a professional. His injury-ridden career should be a cautionary tale for all managers and pitching coaches who try to ride the arm of a youngster with a big fastball, although their fascination with hard-throwing high schoolers remains firmly in place.
Park was forced to retire in 2002. The main legacy he left on the field, other than winning the Korean Series MVP, was that he was someone who could throw baseballs very hard, but could not do much else. I don’t think his passing should change that.
That Park left baseball without realizing his full potential is disappointing. But that he passed away before realizing his new dream of building a stadium for amateur players is beyond disappointing.
Rest in peace, Park Dong-hee.
By Yoo Jee-ho Staff Writer [jeeho@joongang.co.kr]
with the Korea JoongAng Daily
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