‘The Years of Mojung’ will live forever in Lee Seung-yup’s heart
Novelist Choi In-ho writes about love and sacrifice, strife and antagonism, and the quiet landscapes of difficult times in his essay collection Mother Doesn’t Die…. I was burdened by my mother, who suffered from dementia and made the whole family suffer…. But my mother lives forever in the hearts of all of us,’ he sang a penitential lament.
Mother is an eternal name.
Lee Seung-yeop (31, Yomiuri Giants) lost his mother on the 6th of this month, and we remember her as a mother who devoted her life to supporting one of the outstanding baseball players of this era for a short period of time.
Lee Seung-yeop, who met with his mother in an empty house, could not hide his grief at the thought of his mother’s passing, and Lee’s father, Lee Chun-kwang (64), 카지노사이트킴 had tears streaming down his face.
The first time I saw Lee’s mother, the late Kim Mi-ja, was nine years ago, in August 1998, when Lee was making a name for himself as a power hitter, having won his first home run title with the Samsung Lions in 1997 and battling with Doosan’s foreign player Woods for the home run title that year.
With a simple question in mind – how did they manage to raise their son to become one of the best sluggers in the Korean Baseball Organization – I traveled to Daegu to meet Lee’s parents, as part of the “People I Met on Wednesday” series organized by the baseball department of the Korea Daily Sports.
Lee’s mother was no different from any other mother, and while there is a lot of ‘cheating’ going on in the world of sports, Lee’s mother, like most Korean mothers, was not unremarkable, but rather a shadowy figure, quietly focusing on her child’s well-being.
Fast forward three years, and in early 2002, out of the blue, Lee learned that his mother was dreadfully ill. On January 15 of that year, she was admitted to Samsung Medical Center, underwent three surgeries to remove a brain tumor, and was discharged in July, recuperating at home in Daegu.
In the meantime, I met Lee’s father. “Now that Seung-yeop is exercising properly and getting a little thinner…” he said, his eyes reddening as he struggled to speak.
On August 25 of that year, Seung-yeop’s mother traveled to Daegu with her husband and daughter to watch her son play. Seung-yeop hit his 38th home run of the season in front of his mother, but she was unable to express any joy.
In the early stages of her illness, she would only say, “Welcome home, don’t hurt yourself…” whenever her son went to Daegu. In the summer of 1998, she said, “I always felt emotionally secure in the house when he came home from sports and called out ‘Mommy’.”
For five years, Lee’s mother couldn’t keep things straight and would break down in tears when strangers came to visit, making everyone around her feel even more sorry for him. Her son, who she believed in, had become one of the best batsmen in Asia, even on the Japanese stage, and now he had gone to heaven.
Samsung Lions manager Kim Jae-ha, SK coach Lee Man-soo, baseball commentators Park No-joon and Lee Yong-chul, Samsung catcher Lee Hyun-yoon, who is serving as a public service worker, and Samsung ace Bae Young-soo were present at her wake at Fatima Hospital in Daegu on the night of June 6.
Lee was shouting his mother’s name at the top of his lungs, repeating over and over again that he would win the team championship in her name. She lives on in our hearts forever. Rest in peace, GOM BIMBI’s Lee Seung-yeop’s mother.