Until earlier this year, there was a taboo word that was not to be uttered in the KT WIZ dugout of the Korean Baseball Organization.
It was the World Baseball Classic (WBC).
The WBC, held in March of this year, was a nightmare for KT manager Lee Kang-cheol.
The national baseball team, under Lee’s leadership, trained in Tucson, Arizona, USA, with big goals, but the team was plagued by low temperatures accompanied by strong winds and was unable to train properly.
The bad news continued. The team’s return flight home was canceled.
As a result, the team was unable to adjust to the conditions and failed to advance to the second round of the WBC in March, losing to Australia and Japan in the first round.
The heavens continued to turn their backs on Lee Kang-cheol.
KT fell to the bottom of the standings early in the regular season after losing key players to string injuries.
Choi Soo-joon was on the operating table, and Kang Baek-ho struggled with a series of bad performances.
The word WBC was not on the lips of head coach Lee Kang-cheol or anyone else in the organization.
However, KT put the WBC ghosts behind them and began to recover.
After being at the bottom of the standings until early June, KT went on a terrifying run as injured players returned and newcomers like William Cuevas and Lee Ho-yeon played well.
KT’s vertical climb has taken them all the way to second place, and they’re now 4.5 games behind the first-place LG Twins.
The nightmare of the WBC is slowly starting to fade from Lee Kang-cheol’s mind.
And on Aug. 29 at Katie Wise Park in Suwon, he finally said the word WBC.
“The heavens seem to be helping us,” Lee said while explaining KT’s turnaround, “as each game was canceled due to rain, the players were able to recover their physical strength.”
“In fact, at the beginning of this season, I was not happy because the energy of the WBC seemed to affect KT,” he said, then added, “If there is a downhill, there is also an uphill. I’m grateful to the players for enduring the tough times.”스포츠토토
On this day, rain fell from the sky. KT was scheduled to use substitute starter Kim Min-soo after starting pitcher Uhm Sang-baek was injured, but the game was canceled due to rain, so the team continued with its normal rotation.
The starting pitcher for the home game against the Samsung Lions on the 30th was changed from Kim to homegrown ace Ko Young-pyo.