SSG has emerged as a special protagonist of Stove League. The end of the year and the beginning of the year of the KBO League are hot as a ‘topic’ from SSG.
SSG suffered measles in December of last year due to the excommunication of the director. A month after the combined championship, the general manager from SK Wyverns, who had been working fine, suddenly resigned, raising suspicion that an outsider with a close relationship with the owner had continuously intervened in the club’s affairs. Even though the word ‘non-commissioned officer’ appeared in the nonsensical change of manager, and fans demanded an explanation, the club appointed the person rumored to be the next manager as the new manager.
The ‘declaration of war’ by owner Jeong Yong-jin dealt a decisive blow to the confused fans. After jumping into the baseball world, he wrote, “Do not be mistaken for communication,” on his SNS, a space where he voluntarily responded to questions and responses from fans. He did not try to logically explain and suture the situation through the team’s working staff, but said that even the baseball field at the time “couldn’t understand” the owner’s emotional response to directly draw a line.
Many of the fans who called him ‘Yong Jin-i hyung’ felt betrayed, and the baseball world’s liking for the pleasant owner turned into dislike in an instant. A month after that, owner Jeong Yong-jin and the SSG club are not paying much attention to the disappointed public opinion.
And during the Lunar New Year holiday, SSG’s oldest Shin-soo Choo was on the cutting board. In the United States, through a local radio broadcast interview, I talked about the KBO League, and among them, the words about the WBC national team entry are all big bombs.
Choo Shin-soo insulted the national team coach Lee Kang-cheol, the technical committee, and the two junior pitchers who were honored to be selected for the national team by saying, “How long will Kim Gwang-hyun or Yang Hyeon-jong?” To criticize Ahn Woo-jin for not being selected due to his history of school violence, “Korea seems to be difficult to forgive,” he said, literally fueling public opinion. Whether big or small, someone has been hurt and is easily talking about a sensitive social problem that has not healed as a ‘third party’, and the fans are losing their affection for it.
Most of all, he made fun of his juniors and colleagues with the wrong ‘senior role’. Regarding the case of An Woo-jin, “If there is a player who goes through such an unreasonable thing, I think seniors should step out. But nobody steps out. I have to voice my voice and try to help, but I just watch.” It sounds like an argument that other senior players besides himself do not act as seniors.
Choo Shin-soo received the most votes in the vote for the president of the Athletes Association last December, but declined. I haven’t played in Korea for a long time, I don’t know how much longer I’m going to play, I don’t know the situation of the Athletes Association, and I can understand the personal circumstances of having to stay in the US during the off-season. However, many players chose Choo Shin-soo because they regarded him as the most powerful senior in the league, who received an annual salary of 2.7 billion at the time and could come true with just a word. The person who rejected the official selection of such juniors anyway, referring to ‘serving as seniors’, is lowering other colleagues as a result. Even Ahn Woo-jin goes through an additional period of suffering because he tries to act as a senior without completely misunderstanding his pulse. 안전놀이터
The initial intention may have been different, but the interview itself, which is full of unrefined expressions with poor empathy, allows us to guess what kind of existence Choo Shin-soo considers himself in the KBO league.
Owners Jeong Yong-jin and Choo Shin-soo are the two tops who have been at the center for the past two years after SSG Landers acquired and refounded SK Wyverns. SSG is a club where the owner was the main character. The owner, who is difficult to meet in any other club, contacts and communicates directly with the players from time to time. Among them, there is Choo Shin-soo in the ‘royal layer’. SSG’s hot year-end and New Year holidays make us look into its unique structure even more.