▲ South Korean national team players, who won the gold medal at the baseball final of the 2026 Aichi-Nagoya Asian Games held at the Toyohashi Municipal Baseball Stadium in Aichi Prefecture, Japan, on the 27th, pose for a commemorative photo with Minister of Culture, Sports and Tourism Choi Hwi-young and Korea Baseball Organization (KBO) Commissioner Huh Koo-youn.
Star players returning home with gold medals from the 2026 Aichi-Nagoya Asian Games are set to give their respective club teams a final boost in the closing stretch of the season.
Led by national team MVP and pitcher Kwak Been (Doosan Bears), who propelled South Korean baseball to its fifth consecutive Asian Games title, standout performers throughout the tournament including Park Jun-soon (Doosan, batting average 0.500), Kim Joo-won (NC Dinos, 0.444), Cho Hyung-woo (SSG Landers, 0.417), and national team closer Park Young-hyun (kt wiz) have put the joy of their gold medal win behind them and are now preparing to wrap up the regular season.
League leaders kt wiz, with 10 games remaining, have reduced their magic number to directly advance to the Korean Series to 8.
With the return of three pitchers—Park Young-hyun, So Hyung-jun, and Oh Won-seok—bolstering the mound, kt can quickly shrink their magic number over the five games this week against the Kia Tigers and Lotte Giants.
During the two-week absence of core hitters and pitchers Kim Do-young, Park Jae-hyun, and Sung Young-tak, who were dispatched to the national team, the KIA Tigers managed a respectable 4-2 record.
With the trio returning in good health, KIA is harboring hopes of a late surge for third place in this weekend's three-game series against the LG Twins at Jamsil Baseball Stadium in Seoul.
Fourth-place KIA trails third-place LG by 2 games.
Attention is now focused on when Kim Do-young's home run clock, which stalled following his nasal bone surgery, will resume ticking in the regular league.
While Kim has remained stuck at 40 home runs, Austin Dean (LG) and Sam Hilliard (kt) have both hit 39, throwing the home run title race wide open.
Kim hit his 40th home run on September 8.
Fifth-place Doosan, with 9 regular season games left, trails KIA by 5 games and will effectively need to prepare starting from the wildcard series.
Rest and stamina management for the one-two punch of Kwak Been and Choi Min-seok, who saved the national team with brilliant pitching at the Asian Games, are urgently needed.
As of the 27th, after 670 games, professional baseball has drawn 11,827,140 spectators this year, putting it on the verge of surpassing 12 million attendees for the second consecutive year.
If the current trend is maintained over the remaining 50 games, it could break last year's all-time attendance record of 12,312,519 in just one year.
(Photo: Yonhap News)
※
Copying, redistribution, and unauthorized use in AI training are strictly prohibited.