[Sports View]Let’s calm down a little bit about Lee Seung-yeop
Quick, name the only professional sports team for which every game is carried live on Korean cable. If you answered the Yomiuri Giants of the Japanese baseball league, you’re either a serious and helpless couch potato, or an employee in the broadcasting industry. On one channel or another, you will find the Giants in action here, and some games are replayed on tape later in the night or in the wee hours of the morning.Why such blanket coverage? Well, Lee Seung-yeop, Korea’s favorite baseball player, is hitting cleanup. An unusual amount of media scrutiny comes on top of the TV coverage. The attention is all well and good, except that people tend to forget that it’s a long season. That’s especially true when Lee gets off to a slow start.
I have a simple point: Relax! Just because Lee has an 0-for-3 day doesn’t mean he will fade into obscurity. It’s a 144-game season over there, and we were about 15 games into it at this writing.
Lee has had fewer than 60 at-bats this season (he had 524 in 2006). In April, I don’t want to read headlines that scream, “Lee hitless, batting average in the mid-.200s,” or “Lee 0-for-4, no home runs in the last six games.”
On the other hand, I am also tired of seeing Lee on the cover of every sports newspaper in town every time he hits a home run. Plus, after the homers, there are usually a couple of sidebar stories that detail what the pitch was, how far the ball traveled and what Lee felt the moment he made contact.
Here’s my favorite headline of the week from Sunday: “Lee not too far off the pace in the home run race.” Just 15 games into the season, Lee has hit three home runs and now we’re talking about who will win the home run bragging rights for the year?
(Excuse me while I laugh at that absurdity.)
I understand the media’s fascination with Lee’s exploits. He owns the Korean single season record for most home runs at 56, set in 2003. Last year, his third in Japan, he filled up the statistics sheets, batting .323 with 41 home runs, 108 runs batted in, 101 runs scored and a slugging percentage of .615. Lee’s race for the home run title against the ultimate champion (and one-time Korean leaguer) Tyrone Woods did make for some compelling late-summer baseball.
Lee has long been known as a class act, never one to blow off the media. But I don’t know how he can handle all this attention. Even when his mother passed away in January, there were some callous stories that lamented how Lee wouldn’t be able to follow his offseason training regimen because he was spending time with his extended family in Korea.
Yes, we should all be proud of Lee. The Giants may be the second- or third-most recognizable baseball team in the world, behind the New York Yankees and perhaps the Boston Red Sox or the Chicago Cubs. Having one of our own batting cleanup for that Japanese institution is certainly a cause for celebration.
Maybe it’s just me, but I think we should all cut Lee some slack, let him go through his inevitable slumps, and wait until he is sitting nicely in September with a .300 average, 40 home runs and 100 RBI.
Don’t believe it can happen? Check out those Giants games on TV and see.
By Yoo Jee-ho Staff Writer [jeeho@joongang.co.kr]
with the Korea JoongAng Daily
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