“What am I?”
NC Dinos Park Kun-woo started as right fielder and batsman 3 in the 2023 Shinhan Bank SOL KBO League season 9 away match between the Lotte Giants and the team held at Sajik Stadium in Busan on the 1st. Flying up, he succeeded in rescuing the team from a three-game losing streak.
It is safe to say that it was a ‘one man show’ performance. Park Kun-woo started the game in a good mood, getting a hit against Lotte starter Aaron Wilkerson in the first at-bat without two runners in the first inning. And in the second at-bat, ‘luck’ followed. Lotte Ahn Kwon-soo missed a pro-ordinary right-fielder’s fly ball in the 4th inning, where there was no runner and was trailing 0-3. Park Gun-woo did not give up and ran towards the second base with all his might, and made a double. NC did not miss the lucky chance and even scored and pursued Lotte to the bottom of the chin with 2-3.
Park Kun-woo’s bat continued to burn. In the bottom of the 5th inning, trailing by 2-3, Park Kun-woo faced Wilkerson again with 2 out and 1 base, and hit the slider in the 2nd pitch and hit the wall in the middle of Sajik Stadium with a single RBI double. And after getting a walk in the fourth at-bat in the 8th inning, he took the lead batter in the top of the 11th inning and hit a double again.
After resigning on the 1st, after the match against Lotte, Park Kun-woo said, “The coach said on Sunday (July 30), ‘The tough July has passed, so let’s focus on August again’, and the players’ good concentration led to good results. “I have to break the losing streak unconditionally and start well in August, so I tried to do better as much as I came after taking a break,” he said, expressing the joy of victory.먹튀검증
Park Kun-woo, who was not vigilant about the missed ball by Ahn Kwon-soo, had a good reason. An action that came out of the experience of eating a pot of rice during the Doosan Bears days. Park Kun-woo said, “(Ahn) Kwon-soo is close to me, and he is good at playing that kind of cup. I thought it was a joke at first because I experienced a lot of people saying ‘I can’t see it’. He ran fast,” he explained.
Park Gun-woo, who has been recording a batting average of 30% for 8 consecutive years until last year, is personally having an eventful year this year. Park Kun-woo broke off a sluggish start with a batting average of 0.270 in April after returning from the World Baseball Classic (WBC) schedule. He seemed to recover his senses by posting a batting average of 0.303 in May and a batting average of 0.293 in June, but he was excluded from the first team due to ‘attitude’ problems prior to the All-Star break. And he is still struggling to survive in the sense of blow he can’t recover from.
Park Kun-woo said, “I think this year is the year I study the most while playing baseball. “There are a lot of bad things. As a result, I put down a lot of personal things. In fact, I don’t know how I got a hit today (the 1st). Recently, I’ve been following the form of young players and the forms of my favorite players a lot.”
Park Kun-woo’s usual batting form is to set the timing with a large leg kick and then strike. However, in this game, Park Gun-woo took a lot of small movements, such as changing the leg kick process. It was because of ‘benchmarking’ that he came out of wanting to somehow improve his hitting feeling. Recently, Park Gun-woo has been doing a lot of research while looking at the batting form of his teammate Seo Ho-cheol. Seo Ho-cheol was selected by NC in the 87th overall in the 2nd 9th round of the 2019 rookie draft, and this year he jumped to the starting position and is recording 79 hits and 2 home runs in 73 games with a batting average of 0.307.
He said, “Looking at recent games, my leg kick keeps changing. Recently, I tried toe tap, and recently I’m copying Seo Ho-cheol’s batting form. Originally, I thought my biggest strength was batting, but it seems to be shaking a lot. “I don’t know what kind of player I am. I often think, ‘Who am I?’ A lot of the color of the double hit has disappeared. It’s not humility.
He continued, “Originally, it’s a style to lift your legs and hit it, but today in the 1st and 2nd at-bats, you will hit the floor with your feet and hit it. It’s because it’s not going too well. I aimed for a fastball, but the bat didn’t come out of the fastball.” “I’ve been watching a lot of how Seo Ho-cheol plays this year. So, once I said, ‘Hyung will buy me something delicious, so ask for a routine from the time I enter the plate until the end and when I train,’ and he sent me a long message. There are many good players, but I wanted to see the secrets of the players closest to me and who have improved a lot.”
In the end, Park Kun-woo even threw a batting ball directly to get enlightenment from Seo Ho-cheol’s batting form. He said, “I think Seo Ho-cheol is almost the top who can take the fastest swing on a flying ball. So I threw a batting ball last Sunday, but it was no joke. It must be very difficult because it is the first full-time season, average I am doing a lot of research while watching (Seo) Ho-cheol because I am maintaining it well.”
As baseball did not work out well, he also expressed his regret for not being able to help his juniors. Park Gun-woo said, “If baseball was going well, I would have cared about (Kim) Joo-won. Joo-won is going through a difficult time, and I saw a lot of tears in front of him. It’s because something happened. Still, I once talked about it on the premise of ‘I’m not good enough,’ but I think (Kim Joo-won) will become a better player in the future.”
“Baseball is what everyone in the dugout does. He seems to have realized many things after returning from the 2nd Army not too long ago due to his ‘attitude’ problem. He is Park Gun-woo, who is putting in a lot of effort behind the scenes to somehow regain his form and help the team.