The fact that it came up is a miracle in itself!”
The face of former ‘Hulk’ director Lee Man-soo, whom I met after a long time, was full of smiles.
The Laos baseball team, led by former coach Lee Man-soo, held its first local training at the 2nd stadium of the Shaoxing Baseball Sports and Culture Center in Hangzhou, China on the 29th.
The head coach is Kim Hyun-min, former coach of Jinyoung High School. Although he was the leader of the players, Lee Man-soo himself was no different from a coach. He was busy training detailed hitting techniques with each player.
As former coach Lee has always said, the Laos players were overall young and had thin frames. Just looking at him training showed his lack of baseball experience. It was as he lamented, “Once you make a player, you quit baseball for the sake of making a living. Most of the players played baseball for 1-2 years.”
However, Laos achieved the miracle of breaking through the Asian Games preliminaries with such a poor player base. Although they lost 1-4 to Thailand, they beat Singapore 8-7 and took second place in the group. The team that was defeated by Thailand 0-15 in the Jakarta-Palembang tournament, which was their first appearance, has improved so much. The 10 years that former coach Lee had dedicated himself to promoting baseball in Laos since 2014 were a worthy miracle.메이저사이트
Realistically, the next step is difficult. Laos was placed in Group A along with Japan, China, and the Philippines.
Former coach Lee laughed, saying, “It would have been nice to meet Korea, but it’s a cold game from now on.” However, even in his jokes and laughter, the pride and satisfaction of looking at players who were like children touched the viewer deeply.
His dream is to spread baseball throughout the Indochina Peninsula in the future. Laos baseball, which General Manager Lee sowed, is just beginning.
On this day, Director Lee also had a nice meeting with Coach Ryu Joong-il, who leads the Korean national team. An original member of the Samsung Lions and a first-round pick in 1987, the two are seniors and juniors who have been in the team for 5 years.
Coach Ryu said, “It’s been a long time since I saw senior Lee Man-soo. First of all, congratulations on Laos’ first win, and congratulations on their first appearance in the Asian Games (finals). We talked about old times and had a great time,” he said with a chuckle.