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.

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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.

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