Coach Lee Jong-beom, 53, who helped LG win the Korean Series, is leaving the organization.
According to baseball insiders, Lee said goodbye to the team, including general manager Cha Myung-seok and manager Yoon Kyung-yup, shortly after winning the Korean Series. This marks the end of Lee’s five-year stint with LG after the thrill of winning the first championship of his coaching career.
Lee Jong-beom, who was the head coach of the LG Futures (second team) last year, served as the first team’s infield and outfield defense coach this year and helped the team win the overall title. He also won the title with his son-in-law, Ko Woo-seok. During the championship ceremony, Lee presented champagne to LG fans in the outfield, and the fans sang his cheers from his playing days.
For Lee, who left a huge mark on professional baseball with his skills as an active player, this victory was especially special because it came just 10 years after he started coaching.
“I feel very emotional,” the coach said after the win, “because the players did a great job, not the manager or coach. I know this from my own experience, but the players play the biggest role in winning. It was possible because they did a good job of fulfilling the instructions of the manager and coach. I want to give all the credit to the players,” he said.
The former superstar, dubbed the “Son of the Wind,” won four Korean Series titles as a player. In his first season as a professional, he led Haetae to the 1993, 1996, and 1997 Korean Series titles and was named the Korean Series Most Valuable Player (MVP) twice. In his final season, in 2009, he won a championship with KIA.
After hanging up his uniform for the last time in the 2011 season, Lee began his coaching career as a coach for Hanwha in 2013 and took a break from the field in 2015 to work as a broadcast commentator. He returned to the field in 2018 as the head hitting coach for the LG Futures team, a position he held for two years before spending about six months with Nippon Professional Baseball’s Junichi in 2020.
He returned to LG at the end of 2020 and has held key positions in the past three seasons, including operations coach, futures team manager, first base coach, and outfield coach. As a national team coach, he participated in the 2017 Asian Professional Baseball Championship (APBC) and the 2018 Jakarta-Palembang Asian Games.
Following his departure from LG, Lee is reportedly considering training in the U.S. to coincide with his son Lee Jung-hoo’s entry into the major leagues. 캡틴토토 도메인