Dae-Ho Lee trades star status to chase MLB dream with Mariners
ANAHEIM, Calif. – Dae-Ho Lee was famous. He was beloved. He was making good money. He was raising a daughter and had a son on the way. He’d be 34 soon and that body, big in all directions, wasn’t going to hold up forever, which they’d probably excuse. Just keep swingin’, big boy. Keep swingin’ big.
Surely it would’ve been simpler to go on like that. He could stay in Japan or return to Korea and ride the legend he’d built an at-bat at a time over 15 years, where he’d be forgiven when one day he aged and his bat slowed.
Or he could pack it all up and try something different, something harder, in a place where the people might know his name but probably don’t and whose emotional attachment to him would depend entirely on the jersey he wore and then on his last swing.
It’s a long way to go for a grown man with nothing left to prove except maybe to himself.
So what’s Dae-Ho Lee doing here, in Seattle, getting six starts in the Mariners’ first 18 games, enrolling his wife in English classes at the local Korean school, learning a few words himself, finding his way in this world when he’d so commanded his last one?
Well, he’s playing ball. He’s remembering a summer when Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire hit all those home runs, charming a teenager in the baseball-mad city of Busan, South Korea. He’s chasing his favorite players, Derek Jeter and David Ortiz among them, but mostly the elegant Mariano Rivera. He’s following his school-boy pal, Shin-Soo Choo, to a place where the game will test him and the swing that generated 323 home runs in the Korean Baseball Organization and Japan’s Pacific League. He may have wondered what a Triple Crown here means over there, against the biggest of big leaguers. What do home run and batting titles here translate to there? Can our MVP, our champions, be something there, too?
So Lee agreed to a minor-league contract with the Mariners and signed up for a six week-long, spring-training competition at first base. If Lee made the team and lasted the season, he’d earn $1 million. With enough at-bats and production, he could make another $3 million.
“It’s not really shocking,” said Ji-Man Choi, the Los Angeles Angels’ part-time first baseman from Incheon. “It’s more of an inspiration, because at that age he wants to try more. He wants to go further. … I’m sure it wasn’t an easy challenge for him at 33. But it’s inspirational, what he’s doing right now.”
Lee has a boyish face and a smile that matches. He is 6-foot-4 and something like 280 pounds, some of which he wears loosely over his belt, the body of a designated hitter or a saloon bouncer. He platoons for the Mariners at first base with left-handed hitter Adam Lind, which means Lee gets the left-handed pitchers. On Saturday he batted eighth against Angels left-hander Hector Santiago. It was his second start in a week and a half.
The night before, he stood and shook a visitor’s hand, smiling broadly. Beside him, his translator, D.J. Park, did the same. It must be terribly trying to have every conversation run through another person, like the world has gone to a seven-second delay, but Lee is patient and as engaging as one can be in such a situation.
“It was a very hard decision,” he said. “But ever since I was young it was my dream to play major league baseball. … I had a little opportunity before but I didn’t make my decision to challenge the major leagues. I wanted to learn more. So I decided to go to Japan and learn more baseball.”
The translator stopped for a moment, stepped out of the first person and paraphrased, “Basically, he said, ‘Baseball is not easy.’ ”
Lee nodded and grinned and added in Korean, “I still want to learn more. More, more, more.”
In his first 17 at-bats for the Mariners, Lee had four hits, two of them home runs, one of which become Internet lore. Partly because Lee ambushed a 97-mph fastball, letter-high, from Texas Rangers reliever Jake Diekman and hit it over the left-field fence, a walk-off home run that gave the Mariners their first home win in their sixth home game. And partly because the announcers, two gentlemen calling the game from a studio in South Korea, went a bit nuts, and from their screeching and wailing you knew this big fella Lee was important somewhere, that people knew him well and wanted him to succeed and all but wept when he did.
Scouts aren’t sure Lee’s swing is quick enough or short enough, and they’re not sure he can handle more than the occasional work at first base, though he is athletic and his hands are soft. We’ll learn about that soon enough.
For now he’s playing the game of which he once told reporters, “All I want to do is compete against the world’s best in the U.S. Everyone is a minor leaguer wherever they are if they are not part of an MLB starting roster.”
And while he’s free to walk his family to the neighborhood park without much attention, an impossibility in Korea, he is gaining admirers. Fans have been seen wearing T-shirts that read, “Dae-Ho Lee Grail.” He’s been featured in Internet artwork that promises, “DHL Delivers.” The Mariners would be pleased if he were not to become “Dae-Ho Lee Ghost.”
He had to try this first, however. He had to know if he fit, if he were good enough. And that’s why he’s here.
“I am confident,” he said, and it starts there.