“I can’t even talk. How hard must it have been?”
Doosan Bears manager Lee Seung-yeop had a time to talk about the players involved in the “Oh Jae-won shock” before the closing camp at Bears Park in Icheon, Gyeonggi-do, on the 6th.
Oh Jae-won received 2,365 tablets of steelnox and Xanax, medical drugs, from 14 people, including former and current baseball players, 85 times from May 2021 to March this year. This was revealed to the surface in April when Oh Jae-won was indicted on charges of taking methamphetamine and other drugs. At that time, Doosan conducted a full investigation immediately after the report related to Oh Jae-won came out, and confirmed that eight players were prescribed drugs on behalf of him and reported it to the KBO Clean Baseball Center.
The reason why Doosan players were prescribed and delivered drugs by Oh Jae-won was because they used their position to assault and intimidate him. This forced eight players – Kim Min-hyuk, Kim In-tae, Park Gye-beom, Park Ji-hoon, Ahn Seung-han, Lee Seung-jin, Jang Seung-hyun, and Je Hwan-yu – to wait for the prosecution’s investigation, and they missed the season without playing a single game since March. The players were not the only ones affected. Doosan also had 144 games without using eight players as resources. With these players, they could have looked higher.
Fortunately, the punishment of Doosan’s players was not strong enough to affect their careers. In October, the Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office summarily indicted two of the players who had been prescribed substitute, three of the remaining two were suspended from prosecution under conditional conditions at the probation office, and nine were suspended from prosecution under conditional conditions of education. The two, who were summarily indicted, received a summary order of a fine of 3 million won on the 31st of last month.
As the prosecution handed down the punishment, KBO also held a reward and punishment committee on the 4th and imposed 80 hours of community service on eight players. KBO said, “We decided to impose sanctions in consideration of the fact that it was difficult for players to reject demands by coercion and intimidation from senior players, that they could not play most of the season due to the club’s actions, and that they admitted their mistakes and turned themselves in.” And the players who were involved in the “Oh Jae-won shock” gathered in one place for the first time in a long time.
Kim Min-hyuk, Kim In-tae, Park Gye-beom, Park Ji-hoon, Ahn Seung-han, Lee Seung-jin, Jang Seung-hyun, and Je Hwan-yu failed to join the team while they were still away for this year’s season. All they had to do was get together and train on their own. With all disciplinary action imposed, however, the eight gathered at the Icheon Bears Park on Wednesday to conduct their first official training session. Ahn, who has now started a new life as the front desk player, will start working in a slightly different position than the other players. 메이저사이트
Coach Lee Seung-yeop, who had a meeting with reporters for the first time since the closing camp, naturally received questions from players who were involved in Oh Jae-won’s prescription for drug substitution. What kind of advice would he have given to the players? “I told them, ‘Now that it’s over, I need to do better,’ and ‘Good job.’ I’ve never been in that position before, but how hard it must have been for the players without even talking. I wondered how hard it must have been for them, even though it was for us to see them next to them. Some of the players even had families and children.”
Manager Lee Seung-yeop also expressed regret for having a tough season, with eight players unavailable this year. He said, “The increased availability of resources seems to come positively. These players were a really necessary force for the team. I couldn’t tell you because it was in the middle of the season, and it was such an important time, but it is true that we had a lot of losses as we missed more than 100 games.”
It is regrettable to see the team lose one year in vain, but the team is expected to be given equal opportunities. “Chances will be given equally, equally. A year of hard work will never give you another chance,” the team’s coach said. “It may take some time (for players to return to the team) as they have not played in more than 100 games so far. Players themselves need to make more efforts to reduce their anxiety about 100 games to 50, 30 or 10 games,” he said. “I hope they will come back to the team and make good results next year. I hope they can get rid of all their worries and play baseball that they haven’t played until this year.”
