LG Twins need just one more win to end 29 years of hurt

Baseball

Published: 12 Nov. 2023, 14:47

LG Twins need just one more win to end 29 years of hurt

Oh Ji-hwan of the LG Twins rounds the bases after hitting a three-run home run at the top of the seventh inning during Game 4 of the Korean Series against the KT Wiz at Suwon KT Wiz Park in Suwon, Gyeonggi on Saturday. [YONHAP]

The LG Twins may be just a few swings of the bat away from history. After 29 years of hurt, the Seoul club needs just one more win to take the 2023 Korean Series and end one of the longest runs without any silverware the KBO has ever seen.

The Twins thumped the Wiz 15-4 at Suwon KT Wiz Park in Suwon, Gyeonggi on Saturday, taking a two-run lead in the first inning and building on that in the fifth and sixth, before a huge seventh inning put the game well out of the Wiz’s reach.

Starter Kim Yun-sik held the Wiz to a single run over five and two thirds innings of work, while Kim Hyun-soo, Moon Bo-gyeong and Oh Ji-hwan each picked up a home run in the high-scoring game.

The win was the Twins’ third in a row — two of those on the road in Suwon — to take a 3-1 lead in the seven-game series.

Just one more W will see the Twins lift the Korean Trophy for the first time since 1994 and the odds are now heavily stacked in their favor. In the history of the KBO, only the 2013 Doosan Bears have blown a 3-1 lead in the Korean Series.

The Twins started the Korean Series off on the wrong foot, losing the opener 3-2 on home turf at Jamsil Baseball Stadium in southern Seoul. They bounced back in the second game, winning 5-4, and then took that momentum on the road to beat the Wiz 8-7 in Suwon on Friday before Saturday’s blowout win.

The Twins, who also won the pennant this year for the first time in 29 years, have not earned the championship title since they defeated the Pacific Dolphins — later the Hyundai Unicorns and now nothing but history — in 1994, enduring the second-longest drought of all the teams in the KBO. The Twins have been without the title for the majority of their existence.

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.

But this year the Twins are back on top. Having already won the pennant, the Twins are now just one win away from setting the record straight and regaining their long-lost crown.

Game 5 of the Korean Series begins on Monday evening back at Jamsil in Seoul. If the Wiz win that game, the series could continue to as late as Wednesday at the same venue.

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