It’s a nickname for the big boy in the room: LG Twins right fielder Lee Jae-won, 24.

It’s been six years since he joined the LG Twins after graduating from Seoul High School. Until six years ago, he was just a “naive high school student” who was happy after hitting a home run at Mokdong Baseball Stadium and loved it like a child. Along with his friend Kang Baek-ho (KT), he led Seoul High to the glory days of the Cheongnyonggi Championship, where they were runners-up and won the presidential pennant. At the time, the spotlight was on captain Kang Baek-ho, but in terms of sheer power with the bat, Lee Jae-won was a cut above. As expected, he made a big splash at the rookie draft, receiving a second-round pick from LG.

“It helped that I had been playing and hitting home runs since my sophomore year. But most of all, I think it was the fact that coach Yoo Jung-min asked me to go to the outfield once in my third year to see if I could win a game, which helped me get selected earlier than I thought.”

Beautiful memories from Seoul High,
and coach Eunsa Yoo Jung-min

Unfortunately, in the professional ranks, Lee hasn’t yet been able to perform at the level he did in high school. Nevertheless, there are still high hopes for Lee Jae-won. There are very few players who can hit a ball over the center of the Jamsil baseball field even with a light deflection. That’s why Yoo Jung-min, who is currently recruiting baseball players for a new team after stepping down as head coach of Seoul High, gets wistful whenever the subject of Lee Jae-won comes up.

“In high school, he was still growing despite being a big guy, so when I was thinking about what to do to improve his potential, I decided to switch to the outfield. It worked out, and we took him high in the order at LG, but then he got injured in a game while making a hard throw during the draft. It was too bad.”

Yoo’s reminiscence reminded Lee Jae-won of something else.

“In the third grade, I still had good grades, so I had high hopes for the youth national team. However, I was very disappointed when I wasn’t selected. During a practice game, I threw three pitches, and after I threw the pitches, I felt a pop in my arm, so I thought something was wrong, but it turned out to be an injury.”

“Now that I think about it, I don’t think I was a good fit for the national team,” Lee laughed as he continued to talk about his high school days, but you never know. Park Byung-ho (KT) also joined the national team quite some time after leaving the business world.

That’s why his high school days are always so precious to him. He had good teachers and grew a lot. In particular, the loss to Daejeon Go in the first round of the Golden Lion, the first tournament of the season, was a good medicine to unite the players. 보스토토

“After we lost to Daejeon Go, we got together and talked about it. “After we lost to Daejeon, we got together and said, ‘We’re going to do this, we’re going to do that, but in the end, time will pass.’ So we renewed our unity and went on to be runners-up in the Blue Dragon, and when we got to the final of the Blue Dragon, we realized that at this pace, we were going to win the next tournament. We ended up winning the President’s Cup, and it was a great way to end on a high note.