From ‘pinch hitter’ to ‘big coach’, meet Kim Moon-ho, coach of Dongwon University of Science and Technology!
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- on Sep 19, 2023
There is a baseball player who is active as both a ‘coach’ and a ‘player’ throughout the week. This is coach Kim Moon-ho, a former Lotte Giants player, current coach of Dongwon University of Science and Technology, and current top Monsters player. Coach Kim started his career as a professional baseball player after being selected by the Lotte Giants with the 17th overall pick in the 2nd and 3rd rounds in 2006. Coach Kim, who retired as a player after one year with the Hanwha Eagles in 2020, is currently working on nurturing the next generation as a coach at Dongwon University of Science and Technology (hereinafter referred to as Dongwon University of Science and Technology). He also meets baseball fans every week as a member of the popular entertainment program ‘Strongest Baseball’, which began airing in 2022.먹튀검증
Coach Kim, whom we met for an interview, is in excellent physical condition and can be considered an active player. Even at a glance, you can tell how sincere he is about his job as coach at Dongwon Science and Technology University and his career as a player for the mighty Monsters. The reason why Coach Kim Moon-ho was selected as the first protagonist of the newly launched second season of Busan Baseball Annals is because he is one of the hottest baseball players and can tell various stories about the Lotte Giants, rookie draft, and the best baseball. The following is an interview with coach Moon-ho Kim.
[Busan Baseball Annals]
Is there a special reason why you started playing baseball?
[Coach Kim Moon-ho]
My hometown is Jeju Island. At that time, the elementary school I was attending had a baseball team. When I was in third grade, my homeroom teacher looked at me and said, “I think he should play baseball.” I was a bit tall back then. Because I was tall, my homeroom teacher encouraged me to play baseball, and I also wanted to play sports. I told my parents right away, and at first they were very opposed. I am the youngest of two sisters. I guess you never thought you would become an athlete. I continued to pester my parents, and fortunately, I was able to get permission. (Laughs) At first, we had agreed to only do it until elementary school.
Coach Kim Moon-ho was truly one of the national stars during his amateur days at Deoksu Information High School (now Deoksu High School). This is because Deoksu Information High School’s main batting lineup in national competitions was always dominated by a player named Moon-ho Kim, and he was a hitter who lived up to the team’s expectations every time he went out to bat. The nickname ‘genius hitter’ was not unfamiliar to him during his amateur days, but rather, it was one of the more familiar nicknames. He was nominated by the Lotte Giants. However, Busan must have been an unfamiliar city to Coach Kim, who was born in Jeju Island and spent his school days in Seoul. I asked Coach Kim how he felt when he was nominated.
[Busan Baseball Annals]
I understand that Coach had no ties to Busan before joining the Lotte Giants. How did he feel when he was drafted by the Lotte Giants?
[Coach Kim Moon-ho]
To be honest, I was embarrassed at first. Since he went to middle and high school in Seoul, he wanted to play baseball on the Seoul team. After being nominated by the Busan Lotte Giants, I had a lot of worries about whether I would be able to do well even though I had no acquaintances. At that time, I was very worried because I had no relatives and knew nothing about Kang Min-ho except that he was from Jeju Island. However, immediately after being nominated, I started receiving a lot of applications for Ilchon from Lotte fans on my Cyworld mini homepage. I felt the excitement of Lotte fans. (Laughs) I thought, ‘It would be really fun to go to Lotte.’
[Busan Baseball Annals]
He began to show his presence in 2015 by recording a batting average of .300. Until then, Lotte had many great players in the outfield, including Kim Joo-chan, Jeon Jun-woo, and Son A-seop. Weren’t those situations burdensome?
[Coach Kim Moon-ho]
Competition is inevitable once you become a pro. No matter how good your skills are every year, position competition is something that can change overnight. I think I accepted it calmly. Because I knew I wasn’t good enough, I realized early on that if I didn’t try harder, that position would never be my place. When I joined, I think I actually thought the professional stage was a bit easy. But when I actually got there, it was a place where all the flying and crawling athletes gathered. It’s so unfortunate that I overlooked that fact.
It was a series of performances that did not live up to the reputation of a genius high school hitter. At the beginning of Coach Kim’s debut, the Lotte Giants’ outfield was filled with national team-level players. It was never easy to make one of those positions your own. A player named Moon-ho Kim was a player better suited to being a ‘backup’ rather than a ‘starter’. Then an opportunity came to him. He began to prove his worth by playing in 93 games in 2015, hitting .300 with 6.6 runs and 88 hits. And at the beginning of the 2016 season, he showed off his explosive batting ability by challenging the .400 batting average and began to establish himself as the center of Lotte’s batting line at the time. Lotte coach Won-Woo Cho at the time also showed his firm faith in Coach Kim by consistently hiring him. Although his pace declined as the season went on, Coach Kim produced a season that lived up to Coach Cho Won-woo’s expectations by recording career highs of .322, 5, 3, and 171 hits. Coach Kim answered that the driving force behind his career-high performance was ‘faith.’
[Busan Baseball Annals]
In 2016, he finally regained his reputation from his high school days. You recorded a career high. Early in the season, he also attempted to hit .400, finishing the season with a batting average of .302 and .500 with 172 hits. I also still have a lot of memories of the coach who had intuition and consistently hit sharp balls. (Laughs) What was your secret at the time?
[Coach Kim Moon-ho]
The biggest thing was that the director trusted me and hired me. To be honest, if the skills are similar, the things that the coach continues to use are a great source of energy for the players. If one day’s performance is not good, you can’t help but worry, ‘What if I can’t play tomorrow?’, but being able to alleviate those worries is a very valuable opportunity for the athlete. He may have had a lot of hits in the beginning due to his good batting skills, but he is very grateful to the manager who continued to give him opportunities at the time.
[Busan Baseball Annals]
The most famous nickname for a player named Moon-ho Kim is ‘pinch hitter.’ What do you think of this nickname ‘big hitter’?
[Coach Kim Moon-ho]
It’s a nickname I’m very thankful for. It’s an undeserved nickname given to me by my close friend Jeong Hoon, who is still working hard in his career. Thank you so much to Jeong Hoon. Still, I think the nickname is too much for me. (Laughs)
[Busan Baseball Annals]
If you could sum up your professional life in one word, what word would you choose?
[Coach Kim Moon-ho]
I will choose ‘eventful’. I experienced a difficult life in the 2nd team, and although it was short-lived in the 1st team, I covered sports news and did interviews. He seems to have had all those valuable experiences. He was very turbulent.
While interviewing Coach Kim, this reporter suddenly had a question. I was curious about what Coach Kim thought about the current actions of the Lotte Giants, who showed great performance early this season. In fact, the Lotte Giants are a team that shows a similar pattern every year, such as showing good results at the beginning of the season, falling in the middle of the season, and then raising expectations by performing again at the end of the season. As I spent 14 seasons with the Lotte Giants, I was curious about Coach Kim’s perspective on the current situation of the Lotte Giants.