“Oh~ Nice.”
The Korean baseball team, led by head coach Lee Kang-cheol, won a practice game against the Hanshin Tigers of the Japanese professional baseball team held at the Kyocera Dome in Osaka, Japan on the 7th, 7-4. The highlight was a fantastic pitch by Lotte closer Kim Won-jung, who overcame the bases-loaded crisis safely at the end of the 8th inning.안전놀이터
With a 7-3 lead, Kim Won-joong cooked pinch hitter Kenta Itohara with a double hit for the second baseman and struck out Ryo Watanabe by looking. He gave up a point, but it was a best-case scenario. If Kim Won-joong had been hit by a single shot, he could have suffered a great come-from-behind defeat. In this case, the atmosphere of the national team could be clearly down ahead of the first match of the first round of the WBC against Australia on the 9th.
Kim Won-joong allowed 1 strikeout and no run in 1 inning. Park Se-woong, who took the mound as a starter, also struck out one and gave up no runs without getting a single hit in two innings. The two pitchers who joined the WBC national team as members of Lotte led Korea to victory. It was ‘Lotte Day’.
This news was also delivered to the Lotte team, which returned to Korea through Incheon International Airport after conducting the spring camp in Okinawa, Japan. In particular, director Larry Sutton was delighted. Director Sutton said, “I look forward to the performance of Park Se-woong and Kim Won-joong. I’m not surprised he threw well.”
He believed that he had prepared well for the season and would show his skills. Coach Sutton said, “Before joining the national team, I prepared well at camp and trained diligently. He was on the road so he couldn’t watch the game, but he did well as usual. He expects to play an active part in the national team.”
Coach Sutton was unable to see the practice match between the national team and Hanshin as he moved from Okinawa to Incheon. Perhaps because of this, he reacted more vividly to the reporters. With his typical American reaction, he said, “Oh nice~, oh great job~”.