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SK Puts Finishing Touches on First Ever Championship

October 29th, 2007 Shinsano · 1 Comment

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It doesn’t even feel like four days let alone four games played during six days, but less than a week ago it looked like Doosan might be headed for a sweep of its mighty winged dragon-like foe.

But it wasn’t to be just as it did all through the KBO regular season the Wyvrens blazed a trail square through its opponent putting the finishing touches on a four-game streak to win the Korean championship four-games-to-two with a 5-2 victory Monday night. The win gave the franchise, which was established in 2000, its first ever KBO championship. It was the only team in the league to have never won the title.

For as exciting as the first three games of this series were, the last three progressed in a clockwork fashion. After a Doosan run in the first Jun Gun-woo hit a 2-run HR off  Doosan starter Im Tae-hoon in the 4th inning to give SK a lead it wouldn’t relinquish. The vetran Kim Jae-hyun, who hit 2HRs with four RBI in the series and would later be named the series MVP, followed with another HR just one batter later.

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SK starter Chei Byung-yong, looked poised during his 5 2/3 innings allowing just a run on five hits in picking up the win. As usual the SK defense did more than its share. With runners on first and second in the 3rd Chei got Kim Hyun-soo to hit into a double play that killed a potential rally. The play seemed to typlify the last four games of the series for Doosan.  

Im started the game and went 4 2/3 inn surrendering 3 runs and picking up the defeat. The loss was Im’s second in as many games. One has to think Doosan manager Kim Kyung-moon’s decision to start the rookie in Game 6 was questionable at best. It underscores the depth of Doosan’s pitching staff, which after Daniel Rios and Matt Randel, was not Korean-Series-worthy, even in the eyes of Manger Kim.

At the end of the game the SK players took to the mound, hugged, threw the manager up in the air and then indulged in one of the worst ongoing, but enduring, traditions in Korean professional sports–standing before the crowd while Queen’s “We Are the Champions” is played over the stadium speakers.

Tags: Baseball - Korea

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