I Am Kim Sung-keun: A Baseball Manager’s Story

Kim Sung-keun has a substantial record in Korean baseball. He has also been criticized for asking too much of players. Both judgments have followed him through much of his career.

Years after the book appeared, the television program A Clean Sweep let viewers see him manage a group that included retired players. I was struck by how seriously he took each game, even when he was managing for a program rather than a professional club.

Why people called him the god of baseball

Kim’s nickname, Yasin, means “god of baseball.” Some former players have spoken appreciatively about how much attention he gave them. From outside a team, the same intensity could look severe.

Making a place on a professional team takes skill and work. Kim seems to have made a point of staying close to players when they were losing their confidence or needed to work on something specific.

The SK Wyverns, 2007–10

Kim’s SK Wyverns won the Korean Series three times in four seasons and finished as runner-up once.

Under Kim, a team that had not been widely seen as a dominant club developed the consistency to contend year after year.

Making a stronger team from the one he had

Part of Kim’s reputation came from taking over clubs that had struggled and making them harder to beat.

The Pacific Dolphins were one example. They surprised people under Kim, and his later run at SK gave supporters another reason to associate him with a turnaround.

The harder case of the Hanwha Eagles

The Hanwha Eagles had spent years near the bottom of the standings. Some fans wanted the club to bring in Kim and see what more rigorous preparation could change.

Early in 2015, Hanwha looked sharper and played above .500 for a time, a noticeable improvement for a club that had often struggled to win four games in ten.

What I remember is how often an ordinary game had the tension of a decisive game in the Korean Series. The players and their manager looked as though they felt it.

The errors that had so often cost the team a game became less conspicuous.

The improvement did not carry Hanwha into the postseason. As the season wore on, Kim’s use of pitchers became a subject of criticism. Questions centered in part on reliever Kwon Hyuk’s workload and on the way Song Chang-sik was used.

Kim’s time at Hanwha eventually ended with the workload debate still unresolved.

A book about how Kim understood baseball

I Am Kim Sung-keun is an account of what Kim could say about his life once he had stepped away from the Wyverns. The Hanwha seasons came later.

The book gave me a better sense of the habits of thought behind his ability to make some teams more competitive.

I recognized something of the man I later watched on television: reserved in manner and intent on helping players find out what they could do.

He writes as a manager who sees something worth developing in every player. He also writes about the responsibility of the person who makes the decisions and how lonely that job can become.

The seriousness of a close game

That attitude is part of what interested me about Kim’s story beyond baseball. A person can care deeply about doing the work well, even when the people watching see only the result.

Professional sport gives people a clear view of what effort looks like when it is made in public and the outcome is still in doubt.

A team can lose and still give a crowd something worth remembering. That is often what happens when you can see how much the players are putting into the attempt.

Kim wrote this book after leaving SK in 2011. It gives readers a chance to consider what it cost him to spend so much of his life trying to get the details of one game right.

Book details

I Am Kim Sung-keun

Author

Kim Sung-keun

Published

December 5, 2011

ISBN13

9788963707204

View the book on YES24

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