The professional baseball trade market has been closed. The LG Twins solved the starting pitcher’s concerns once they recruited Choi Won-tae. It is not possible to bring a starter right away just because you want a starting pitcher, but I think the LG front has shown great negotiating power in a situation where the pressure is even greater. Determination and execution were outstanding. This is arguably one of the best scenes of the season. The process and results of filling the core of the team’s power composition are great, but the psychological factor that this trade will give inside and outside the team is also important. I pay attention to the inner awakening effect.
“You have to keep the team boiling.” In the past, Kim Yong-hee, KBO (Korea Baseball Organization) game operation committee member, said this to me. It was said that when the team faced a crisis, the front desk had to look at the circumstances and put the necessary resources in the right place. It is a message that there is a timing for trade or player replacement, and you should not miss the time. In May 2019, Seong-beom Na’s knee injury and the trade deadline in 2020, I remember these words as a compass for me. After reinforcing the bullpen with a trade in the summer of 2020, a voice of self-reflection came out from inside the pitching staff. At that time, pitching team leader Lim Chang-min said, “A good junior left the team because we made a mistake,” and the remaining players gathered their sorry hearts and made it an opportunity to change the atmosphere. The cohesiveness created from internal solidarity was as great as the new player being a boon. If this process goes well, it becomes an opportunity to reset to take a new leap forward. It is the role of the leader group of players-coaches-fronts to turn the various crises that a professional sports team encounters during the voyage of the season into momentum for resetting.
Recently, there are a lot of news about high school baseball in the national championship. In the case of baseball, the introduction of notable players continues ahead of the draft held on September 14th. One of the things that should not fall into the player introduction is the body size. And the description of ‘stately physique’ follows. It’s kind of a cliché, I think. He is still a player at a time when his body is growing, but it seems that he hastily judged that he will become a lumber by the current standard. In particular, it seems that there is a tendency to think that even the possibility is small because of the short height. Although it has disappeared a lot, this stereotype still exists in baseball.
The problem is that stereotypes, paired with numbers, keep people believing as if it were real science. From “short pitchers have slow velocity” to “average short players rarely succeed” and so on. These words combine a leap of logic, a preconceived notion. Apart from the correlation between height and restraint, restraint itself is no longer the absolute criterion for success. For pitchers, other data such as spins and movement are becoming more important metrics. If you’re a hitter, you don’t just look at batting average. Right now, even if the batting average is bad, it is a changing trend for professional teams at home and abroad to predict and expect the possibility of development by looking at the batting speed. The story of Jose Altuve, a 168 cm tall home run infielder who plays in the major leagues, is a good example of breaking this stereotype.먹튀검증
We need to look carefully to see if there are any stereotypes in the word average. The message I found in the book ‘The End of Average’ I recently read was “There are no average people.” Todd Rose, a professor at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education who wrote this book, argues that humans obsessed with averages to find rules and create typical samples. In 1940, the U.S. Air Force measured 10 items such as height, chest circumference, and arm length of 4063 pilots to design a fighter cockpit, and there was no pilot who was average in all items. The Air Force and aircraft manufacturers, who tried to design cockpits for average pilots, were stunned by the results. Eventually, we give up on applying average figures. The now-obvious-looking adjustable seat and helmet drawstrings are incorporated into the design. The author’s explanation is that the era in which the average is standard should go to an era in which individual uniqueness, individual characteristics, and individual development speed and path are acknowledged. Professor Rose himself was the one who dropped out of school because he was diagnosed with ADHD as a child.
A lot of stereotypes still hold power. Some are excluded and hurt. What stereotypes and averages are in front of you?
Korea Coaches Association Certified Coach Kim Jong-moon
Kim Jong-moon was a reporter for the JoongAng Ilbo and worked as a front for the NC Dinos baseball team from 2011 to 2021. At the end of 2018, he took over as the leader of the ‘last-place’ team and led it to the first championship team two years later. He is currently a Korean Coach Association Certified Coach (KPC).
