The Doosan Bears will face the Samsung Lions in the best-of-seven Korean Series starting Thursday at the Lions' home in Daegu. This will be the Bears' first Korean Series appearance since 2008, when they lost to the SK Wyverns in five games. The Lions are seeking their third straight Series crown.

/ Yonhap







By Kim Tong-hyung

This year's Korea Baseball Organization (KBO) title has come down to a fight between beastly zoo animals.

After laboring past their Seoul rivals the Nexen Heroes and LG Twins in the playoffs, the Doosan Bears will challenge the Daegu-based Samsung Lions, the league's relentless but dull juggernaut, in a best-of-seven championship series opening in Daegu on Thursday.

The Lions, the 2011 and 2012 champions and the first team in KBO history to top the regular-season standings for three-consecutive years, are favored to clinch their third-straight title.

Their depth in pitching has been a target of league-wide envy. Bae Young-soo, Yoon Sung-hwan, Jang Won-sam and Cha Woo-chan are all double-digit winners as starters and they are backed by a shutdown bullpen featuring Ahn Ji-man, Shim Chang-min and Oh Seung-hwan.

The Lions' hitters are capable of lighting up the scoreboard. The lineup is anchored by a trio of left-handed sluggers in Choi Hyung-woo, Chae Tae-in and Lee Seung-yeop. Aside of the soft-tossing Yoo Hui-kwan, the Bears don't seem to have the quality left-handed pitchers needed to defuse these hitters.





Bears players celebrate after beating the LG Twins 5-1 at Jamsil Stadium in Seoul, Sunday. This is the Bears' first encounter against the Lions in the Korean Series since the 2005 season when they lost 4-0. / Yonhap



It's hard to imagine the Lions' layoff between the regular season and the Korean Series being a problem when rust wasn't a factor when they won the previous two titles with the same core of players.

The Bears aren't helped by KBO's playoff format, which rewards the regular-season winner a bye all the way to the Korean Series, disfavoring lower-ranked teams whose pitchers are worn down by then. And against the Heroes and Twins, Bears manager Kim Jin-wook managed his bullpen with less planning and restraint than some would use when unspooling toilet paper.

The margin of error is small for Bears starters Dustin Nippert and Yoo, who have so far been the team's most important postseason performers. The Bears don't have the fire-breathing closer the Lions have with Oh, and it remains to be seen whether Kim's bullpen-by-committee approach can cut it against a team that kills right-handed pitching.

The Bears could be argued as a team with more firepower than they showed so far in the postseason. The team needs its power hitters like Hong Seung-heon and Choi Jun-seok to break out of their October slumber to have a puncher's chance against the Lions and they just might.

The Korea Times predicts the Lions to win the series and their third-consecutive title in five games. In the meantime, here are some of the most memorable Korean Series performances since the country introduced pro-baseball in 1982.





Lions manager Ryu Joong-Il says solid defense is one of the Bears' strengths and that training has focused on base running and defense. / Yonhap



Park Chul-soon grinds it out

It happened to be the Bears (then the OB Bears) and Lions pitted against each other in the first Korean Series in 1982. The Bears won the series in six games, conceding a draw and a loss to the Lions, who couldn't overcome the league's best pitcher that year ― Park Chul-soon.

Park, a former minor league prospect, won 24 games for the Bears in the regular season that year and his streak of winning 22 straight starts is considered one of the KBO records least likely to be broken. However, his body had broken down by the excessive innings by the time the Bears reached the Korean Series.

The Bears and Lions played to a draw after 15 innings in Game 1, followed by the Lions trouncing the Bears 9-0 in Daegu. With his team in crisis, Park had pain killers injected to his ailing back and pitched as a reliever in Games 3 and 4, both won by the Bears. He then started Game 6 and gutted out a complete game.

The Bears broke a 3-3 tie in the bottom of the ninth by exploding for five runs and Park jumping into the arms of catcher Kim Kyung-mun after preserving the 8-3 win remains the definitive Korean Series image.

Regrettably but predictably, Park was never the same pitcher again after the abuse he took in 1982 and retired in 1996 with a 76-53 career record.

Choi Dong-won's four wins

The late Lotte Giants pitcher Choi Dong-won, who in his prime combined a 150-kilometer fastball and a knee-bending curve, delivered a legendary Korean Series performance in 1984 for essentially the same reason Park did in 1982: His talent was so much better than his peers and these were the days when managers abused pitchers with maddening disregard for their health.

Choi, who died after a bout with cancer in 2011, remains the only pitcher ― and hopefully the last ― to win all four Korean Series games for his team.

Coming off a regular season when he went 27-13 with 6 saves, Choi silenced the Lions with a complete game shutout in Game 1. After the Lions tied the series at 1-1 after Game 2, Choi started Game 3 on two days' rest and pitched another complete game for the Giants in their 3-2 win.

What happened next in the series is both great and grotesque and cemented Giants manager Kang Byung-chul's reputation as a killer of careers.

After the Lions tied the series in Game 4, Kang started Choi in Game 5 again, only he didn't have enough juice this time as the Giants fell behind 3-2 in the series.

That didn't keep Kang from using Choi as a reliever in Game 6, where he pitched five shutout innings to preserve a Giants win. And just two days later, Choi started Game 7 for the Giants and pitched another complete game as the Giants won 6-4 to win their first title.

Needless to say, Choi was never the same pitcher again after 1984.

Park Choong-sik's 181-pitch game

While the Lions now seem to be on the verge of building a dynasty now, it will take years for them to have a shot at matching Kia Tigers' 10 Korean Series titles. The 1993 Korean Series between the two teams is memorable because of Lions' rookie pitcher Park Choong-sik.

The Tigers (then the Haitai Tigers) were already seeking their seventh Korean Series title that season and perhaps fielded their best team ever, with superstar rookie Lee Jong-beom leading a potent offense that was balanced with a pitching staff anchored by the unhittable Sun Dong-yeol.

With the series tied at 1-1, the underdog Lions started Park to face Tigers veteran Moon Hee-soo in Game 3. The game turned out to be a gruesome pitching duel, with the Tigers' Moon, Sun and Song Yoo-suk limiting the Lions to two runs over 15 innings.

Park also limited the Tigers to two runs, but with no relief help. He threw a staggering 181 pitches over the 15 innings in the game that ended in a tie.

Park got the call again as the starter for Game 7, but was clearly running on fumes, as the Tigers got to him early and secured their seventh championship title. Park retired in 2002 with a 77-44 career record.

Never-ending series

The 2004 Korean Series between the Hyundai Unicorns, which preceded the Heroes, and the Lions is memorable because it lasted nine games, thanks to three ties produced by a new rule that a postseason game can't be longer than four hours.

The Unicorns eventually defeated the Lions, who managed three wins and wasted an epic Game 4 performance by Bae, then a young flame thrower who kept the Unicorns scoreless and hitless for 10 innings in a game that ended in 0-0 tie after 12 innings.

Alarmed by a championship series producing false ending after ending, the KBO allowed Game 9 to take place at Jamsil despite a heavy rainstorm.

In a game where bad field conditions made it a crap shoot, the Unicorns prevailed 8-7, scoring all of their runs in the second inning and using a swarm of pitchers to fend off a Lions rally. Unicorns reliever Cho Yong-joon was named the Korean Series MVP with three saves.

Na Ji-wan's walk-off homerun

Among the Tigers' 10 titles, it could be said that the last one it won in 2009 was delivered in the most dramatic fashion.

Against the pesky SK Wyverns, the Tigers got off to a promising start by winning the first two games, only to win the next two on the road with its starters Rick Guttormson and Yang Hyung-jong getting battered.

A brilliant performance by Aquilino Lopez gave the Tigers a Game 5 win, but the Wyverns answered with a 3-2 win in Game 6.

This set up a nail-biting Game 7 that ended with a memorable swing. With the game tied at 5-5 in the bottom of the ninth, Tigers' free-swinging shortstop Na Ji-wan connected on a high fastball by Wyverns reliever Chey Byung-yong for a walk-off homerun that won the championship.