Twenty-nine years of hurt ends as LG Twins secure KBO pennant

Go Woo-suk of the LG Twins celebrates during a game against the Kia Tigers at Gwangju Kia Champions Field in Gwangju on Sept. 19. [YONHAP]

The LG Twins broke a 29-year dry spell to win the KBO pennant on Tuesday, locking in the regular season title with eight games still to go.

Not a single Twins player took to the field on Tuesday, securing the pennant instead at the bats of the Kia Tigers.

The Gwangju club, currently in sixth place with an outside shot at a playoff spot, beat the second-place KT Wiz 3-1 at Suwon KT Wiz Park in Suwon, Gyeonggi, putting the Wiz 8.5 games behind the Twins with too few games left to catch them.

The third-place NC Dinos, who sit 11 games back and still have 11 games left to play, also lost 9-7 to the fifth-place SSG Landers, securing the Twins’ crown.

The Doosan Bears complete the current playoff lineup in fourth place, 11.5 games behind the Twins.

Tuesday’s results — which the Twins reportedly became aware of while riding the team bus down to Busan ahead of a two-game series against the Lotte Giants later this week — give the Twins the regular season title for the first time since 1994. That year they also went on to win the Korean Series, and it was also the last time the Seoul club lifted the championship trophy.

The Twins’ pennant success is also a chance for the Jamsil-based club to set the record straight a bit on just who deserves to rule the streets of eastern Seoul.

The Twins are one of the five remaining teams that founded the KBO back in 1982, although at the time they were owned by broadcaster MBC and played as the MBC Chungryong.

Alongside the OB Bears, now the Doosan Bears, the Haitai Tigers, now the Kia Tigers, the Lotte Giants, the Samsung Lions and the now-defunct Sammi Superstars, the Twins were there from the very birth of the KBO — although they finished third in that opening season.

Over the years, the Twins have seen little success when it comes to silverware.

Although they saw some results when the KBO played with different formats — in 1983 they won the second half split and in 2000 they topped the Magic League, one of two four-team leagues at the time — the Twins have only actually topped a full-length, all-team KBO table twice, in 1990 and 1994.

On both occasions, the Twins went on to win the Korean Series title as well, adding the championship to the pennant for the only four major trophies the club has ever won.

Since 1994, the club has increasingly found itself playing second fiddle to the Bears, a rival that Twins fans still see as a usurper to the Seoul baseball crown.

While the Twins were founded in Seoul in 1982, the Bears started their life down in Daejeon, moving to the capital in 1985 and eventually joining the Twins at Jamsil Baseball Stadium a year later in 1986, the two teams sharing a home ever since.

The Kiwoom Heroes, the third Seoul team, was not founded until 2008, leaving the Twins as the original Seoul club — even if a lot of people that aren’t LG fans have already forgotten the fact.

But despite LG’s pedigree, it was the Bears that shone. Since that 1994 Twins pennant, the Bears have topped the table four times and taken the Korean Series title five times, missing out on the playoffs just three times between 2004 and 2021.

That has long been a serious point of contention for Twins fans, who are fed up with the Bears stealing the limelight. That story has changed this year: It’s the Twins' chance to party while the Bears likely face a tough postseason run.

The Twins also look likely to be a force to be reckoned with in the postseason.

They built their success this year on the back of serious hard work, slowly edging their way up the standings over the last three or four years on a solid foundation of solid offense and defense.

The numbers speak for themselves: The Twins led the league in team batting average and stolen bases and were No. 2 on ERA.

With the Twins already crowned, the final two weeks of the season will see the remaining KBO clubs fight to secure the best playoff spots.

In the KBO, the pennant-winning team books a ticket straight to the Korean Series, the second-place team goes straight to the second round of the playoffs, the third-place team goes to the first round of the playoffs and the fourth- and fifth-place teams face off in the Wildcard Series, which the fourth-place team enters with an automatic one-game advantage.

Regular season games are currently scheduled to end on Oct. 10.

BY JIM BULLEY [jim.bulley@joongang.co.kr]