The Jokbal Edition: Lee Dae-ho (aka Big Boy)

Last week had a lot of contenders for the jokbal honors, but there can only be one and that one is Lee Dae-ho (이대호) of the Lotte Giants. Lee began his KBO career with the Lotte Giants in 2001 after being taken in the 1st round as the fourth player selected in the second draft. He remained with the Giants until the end of 2011. In 2012 he made a jump to the NPBL and played with the Orix Buffaloes. In 2014 he moved to another NPBL team, the Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks. At the end of the 2015 season with the Hawks, Lee signed with the Seattle Mariners and spent one season the MLB.

After the end of the 2016 season, Lee found his way back to his home country and his original KBO team, the Lotte Giants. He signed a 4 year contract with Lotte to become the highest paid player in the KBO at 3.75 billion won per year (approximately 3.2 million USD per year).

Lee, nicknamed Big Boy, is a towering figure at 194 cm tall and 113 kg. Anybody that knows me will tell you that I love to celebrate the big guys and Lee makes the cut.

Now on to why I selected him for the jokbal honors this week. Lee definitely has the build to demolish a plate of jokbal and he may or may not have demolished one last week. What I do know is that he demolished opponents and the baseball during Lotte's 2 series last week. He finished the week going 10 for 22 with 2 HRs (both coming in the same game). For that, he is taking home the jokbal this week.

Check back in next week to see who grabs the jokbal honors!

The Jokbal Edition: Choi Jeong

Choi Jeong - 2016-17 Super Star Baseball Black Edition

The second week of the KBO brought a few people into consideration for jokbal of the week, but there could only be one. This week the honors go to Choi Jeong of the SK Wyverns. Before I get into the baseball end of things, I would like to make a possibly interesting comment about his name. In Korea, the typical name consists of 3 syllables. One syllable for the surname and two syllables for the given name. However, Choi Jeong is only two syllables (1 for surname Choi and 1 for given name Jeong). But where does this originate? Well interestingly enough, two syllable names started in Korea during the times of royalty and they were given to royalty because they could not have the same name as anybody else. By the way, Choi certainly played like royalty in his Saturday night game against the NC Dinos and that is what earned him jokbal honors.

Choi, a player that I consider to be a highly underrated, began his KBO career in 2005 after being drafted in the first round by the SK Wyverns. Throughout the years he has been in the top 10 for various stats at the end of the season. During last season he ended in a tie with Eric Thames for the HR title with 40 long balls. This year, through 8 games, Choi has tallied 9 hits and 5 of those are homeruns. Four of those homeruns came on Saturday night against the NC Dinos and made him the 3rd person in KBO history to hit 4 HRs in one game. That, my friends, earned him the jokbal honors for the week.

Choi on the Scoreboard on 04/01/2017

Choi Jeong's 4 HRs on 04/08/2017

The Jokbal Edition: Na Ji-wan

2015 Baseball's Best Series 2

When selecting the jokbal edition player for opening weekend, it was a no-brainer to go with Na Ji-wan (나지완) of the KIA Tigers. Na absolutely lit things up on opening weekend in the opening series against the Samsung Lions at Daegu Samsung Lions Park. Through the 3 game series he made 11 plate appearances and went 5 for 7 with 4 walks. Two of his five hits came in the form of homeruns, one grandslam and one solo shot, in the first game of the series. I'm sure he could have partied with a plate of jokbal and glass of soju at the end of that night and the opening series.

For your accomplishments last week, Team Jokbal salutes you and is sure to offer up a plate of delicious pig's feet for you soon!

Na Ji-wan's Solo Shot

Na Ji-wan's Grandslam

My First NPBL Cards

I have been thinking about buying some NPBL (Japanese Baseball League) cards for a while and I finally ordered some last week. I don't really know a lot about Japanese baseball, but I do watch games from time to time on TV and the internet. Anyway, I feel like you learn a lot about the game and players through card collecting so I thought it would be cool to start collecting Japanese cards and following the NPBL players a bit.

For my first purchase, I bought a box of 2015 BBM 25th Anniversary and a box of 2012 BBM Suntory Dream Match 2012 (Team Set). My first impression of BBM cards is that they are a nice quality card. I also like the fact that they include foreign players, unlike the current KBO cards.

The BBM 25th Anniversary cards are a mix of old and players and on the backs of the cards there is a picture of their BBM rookie card and some stats. The cards are very nice looking and I like the design without borders. It makes the photos seem a little bit more like a nice piece of art.

In terms of the box break, there are 20 packs per box with 6 cards per pack for a total of 120 cards per box. The complete set consists of 213 cards (Base + Great Records and Highlights + Old-time Stars + Stars Shining Overseas + Legendary Stars + Rising Stars). There are also auto and jersey cards that are not included in the 213.

Here are some of the cards that I got from the BBM 25th Anniversary break.

Box Front & Back

Tuffy Rhodes 

Alex Ramirez 

Daisuke Matsuzaka 

Matt Murton 

Wladimir Balentien 

Lee Dae-ho 

Shohei Ohtani 

 Great Records & Highlights

Hideki Matsui (Old-Time Stars) 

Norichika Aoki (Stars Shining Overseas) 

Shinnosuke Abe (Legendary Stars)

 Takanori Suzuki (Auto)

Shinya Miyamoto (Jersey)

The BBM 2012 Suntory Dream Match box provided a team set of the players that participated in the game. The sets were limited to 3,000 and the set that I got was numbered 2939/3000. The 2 teams in the set are the Tohoku Japan Heroes and The Premium Malts. The game ended with a score of 7-6 in favor of the Premium Malts. In the set you get 49 player/manager cards (24 from the Premium Malts and 25 from the Japan Heroes). There are also some other inserts that you can get in the sets and this is actually where I ended up with my favorite Japanese card so far. It is an auto of Isao Harimoto, an ethnic Korean that has lived his whole life in Japan, was born in Hiroshima in 1940, survived the atomic bombing of Hiroshima (the only survivor to ever play in the NPBL), and he is the all time record holder for hits in the NPBL.

Here is a look at the box and a few of the cards.

Box Front & Back

Isao Harimoto 

Eji Bando

Isao Harimoto (auto)

The Jokbal Edition: Kim Tae-kyun

Kim Tae-kyun (2016-17 Super Star Baseball Cards Black Edition)

This week Kim Tae-kyun of the Hanhwa Eagles gets the nod in the jokbal edition. Kim, coming off of a rocky 2017 WBC after going 1-8 through 3 games, isn't the heftiest player in the KBO but he still enters the mix at 185cm tall and a weight of 110kg. I would love to share a plate of jokbal with him.

Kim began his KBO career in 2001 after being drafted by the Hanhwa Eagles in the 1st round as a 1st baseman. He got his first start in April of that year and went on to play in 88 games while posting a 0.335 average with 20 HRs and 54 RBIs. He also earned rookie of the year honors at the end of the 2001 season.

Throughout his career in professional baseball, Kim has spent 14 seasons in the KBO (all with Hanhwa) and 1 season in the NPBL playing for the Chiba Lotte Marines. In his time in the KBO he has managed to earn many top 10 finishes in stats (48 times through 2015) and he is coming off of a 2016 season where he finished 2nd in average at 0.365 and 2nd in RBI at 136. As for career stats, Kim has established himself as a hitter that is going to get a hit about 1/3rd of the time with a 0.324 average and his bat isn't absent of some pop as he has averaged close to 20 homers per season (276 HR).

Kim's Only Hit During the 2017 WBC

New Additions to the Blog

In an attempt to expand the blog a bit and showcase some of the inserts from my collection, I have added a few more pages over the last few days. I added pages for autos, jersey cards, #'d super star cards.

You can check them out in the sidebar on the right or click the links below.

Autos: http://kbocollection.blogspot.kr/p/blog-page_9.html
Jerseys Cards: http://kbocollection.blogspot.kr/p/jerseys.html
Super Stars: http://kbocollection.blogspot.kr/p/super-star.html

2017 WBC - My Time at the Gocheok Sky Dome

There were big expectations for Team Korea entering into the 2017 WBC even though they possibly had the weakest line-up that they have ever taken to the WBC. Key MLB and KBO talent was absent from Team Korea after injuries, surgeries, MLB spring training commitments, and off field incidents. After strong finishes in 2006, 2009, and a first round exit in 2013, this was supposed to be the year that they redeemed themselves but that wasn't quite the case. The 2017 WBC saw Team Korea exit in the first round once again.

In the opening game for Team Korea, a 2-1 loss, bats pretty much didn't exist as they only posted 7 hits with 6 of them coming from 3 players. Min Byung-hun, Son Ah-seop, and Seo Geon-chang seemed to be the only players that were swinging with any confidence that day. The pitching wasn't much better with Jang Won-jun walking in the first of the 2 runs scored by Israel. The final and game winning run was given up by Lim Chang-yong. The only bright spot on the mound that night was Oh Seung-hwan, the lone MLB pitcher, as he threw 20 pitches over 1.1 innings and struck out 3 of the 5 batters he faced.

The second game against the Netherlands, a 5-0 loss, was a total disaster with the bats cold again and the pitchers giving up the long ball. In game 2 Korea only managed 6 hits with Min Byung-hun and Son Ah-seop both going 1-3. If you are wondering why I keep mentioning those two, it's because they were the only 2 that batted with any consistency. Now on to the horrible pitching. The started Woo Kyu-min wasted no time giving up a huge 2 run shot to Jurickson Profar in the bottom of the 1st. He gave up another run in the 2nd inning and Won Jong-hyun pretty much extinguished any hope that Korea may have had after giving up a 2 run shot to Rudolf Oduber in the 6th.

The third game finally brought a win and a look at what Korea could have done in the first 2 games if their bats had warmed up. In that game Korea managed to put bats on the ball (18 hits) and runs on the board in an 11-8 victory over Chinese Taipei. In that game 5 players had multiple hits with Kim Jae-ho leading the way by going 3-4. The pitching was rocky once again with the exception of Oh Seung-hwan who threw 23 pitches over 2 innings and getting the win for Korea.

While it wasn't a great series for Korea, I did enjoy getting to go to the stadium to see Team Korea play a couple of games. The only bright side, other than my green wig, of this WBC was Korea getting 1 win in the first round Korea managing to get another shot at the next WBC title without having to go through qualifiers.