LG Twins coach Yeom Kyung-yeop, who confirmed first place in the 2023 regular season, always does not forget Lim Chan-gyu’s name when he looks back on this season. Before the game on the 5th, Lim Chan-gyu appeared in 28 games and played 132⅔ innings, recording 12 wins, 3 losses, 1 hold, and an ERA of 3.60, taking center stage on the team’s mound and contributing to the championship. Until Chan-gyu Lim, ‘Ellin’, heads to the stage of the Korean Series as LG’s main pitcher. Lim Chan-gyu’s scenes about LG’s win this year, past wins that were not reached, and future wins.
# “Suddenly everyone applauded”
October 3rd. On the bus heading to Busan for the away game, Lim Chan-gyu was watching Disney+’s <Rockies> series, not the other team’s game with the magic number at stake.
“I just didn’t watch it on purpose. To be honest, in my heart, I wanted to do it at the stadium today (the 4th). I was just watching the movie after seeing the early score, and suddenly everyone started clapping. I took my earphones out. He smiled and said, ‘Congratulations.'”
Lim Chan-gyu said that he would have been more emotional if the victory had been confirmed at the baseball stadium. The double header against second-place KT Wiz on September 27th and the Doosan game on October 1st, where Lee Ji-kang achieved his first quality start since his debut, were what Lim Chan-gyu calls ’emotion-raising’ games.
“As you go from episode 1 to episode 9, the atmosphere gets more and more mature. As the magic number decreases, I thought, ‘This is a really big deal. I’m going to cry,’ but suddenly the sun set on the bus. Everyone shook hands at the rest area and said congratulations. My “I didn’t really feel it. I wondered if this was what had happened. Of course, I felt it a little more when I woke up and received the call.”
# With memories from 10 years ago,
LG ended a dark period by successfully making the postseason for the first time in 11 years in 2013, exactly 10 years ago. And this year, LG won the regular season for the first time in 29 years and advanced directly to the Korean Series. If it had not been a rest day, the emotion would have been more felt if the victory had been confirmed at the end of the game.
“I thought it would be more than that. There will be more things to come than when I started my first fall baseball game. I also talked to (Oh) Ji-hwan, (Chae) Eun-seong, and (Yu) Kang-nam on the phone, and it was very disappointing. “Of course, the players I worked hard with are doing well and are doing well on other teams, but I think about those things and the struggles I had with the players I have now, so I think a lot of things have come and gone.”
“I don’t know. I guess I’ll find out when it’s over. To be honest, there’s nothing. I’m scheduled to pitch tomorrow, and it’s not over yet. I was really looking forward to it, but I feel like there’s still something left. I feel like I’m going to cry when the Korean Series ends. “I feel it.”
# “What can I do? All I can do is throw the ball.” As
he was selected to the national team for the 2022 Hangzhou Asian Games, he shared his joy over the phone with the players who unfortunately were not able to share the moment of confirming the championship.
“(Go) Wooseok contacted me. I also contacted (Jeong) Wooyoung, and Wooseok said, ‘Congratulations.’ I thought it was a different team. Oh, congratulations to you too.”
Im Chan-gyu soon understands the feelings of Go Woo-seok, who must have had a hard time this season and is still having a bit of a hard time.
“Wooseok talked to me a lot this year, and I went through a lot of trouble. I’m still doing it now. When I went to the Asian Games, the first thing he said was ‘It’s so hard.’ But that was really difficult. I also had a hard time last year, so I went through a lot of ups and downs. After going through it, I understand that feeling.”
“What can a pitcher do? There’s no other way than to throw one pitch from the mound. If you just keep throwing, 10 or 20 years from now, won’t you be the best closer? The conversation went like this. In the end, Wooseok “I hope I do well, and I hope that I won the gold medal, won’t be stressed, and will return home in good form and perform well in the Korean Series.”
# The exact spot the boy was looking at.
“I mean, really, this is something exciting, but it’s not like this, it’s just that I’ve become very silent.”
2002 Korean Series between LG Twins and Samsung Lions. Samsung won its first Korean Series championship with back-to-back home runs that confirmed the championship, but it was a painful memory for LG fans. The bitterness was the same for Lim Chan-gyu, ‘Ellin’, who was an elementary school student.
“At that time, Coach Seung-Yeop Lee and senior Ma Hae-Young cried while they were playing the final game. I remember it exactly. They said they wouldn’t go to school the next day. I remember every name of the players, and I cried after seeing that, and now, after 29 years, we won first place in the regular season. “I couldn’t believe it because I thought it was going to be included in the Korean series, so I didn’t know what to say.”
“I think this itself is romantic, and I wonder how there can be a drama better than this. In order for that drama to end well, I need to throw it well and then think about it, but for now, I don’t think there will be any more dramas than this. “I wonder if an extreme situation will come, so I want to save each and every scene when I throw each pitch.”안전놀이터
# Before that, Lim Chan-gyu has 11⅓ innings left until the regulation innings goal . There are two remaining opportunities to pitch.
“I was out of the starting lineup for about a month, but it still means something to be in regulation innings, and since I have about 2-3 weeks of rest after the season anyway, I want to pitch well and finish until the end. I plan to pitch until the end.”
# Lim Chan-gyu, who was a member of Elin, said to other Elins,
“We can’t become a team that doesn’t win until that friend grows up and joins LG. It may not boil as much emotion as it does now, but now we are winning often. “I hope we’ll be remembered as a good team that wears a ring.”