Paying it forward: How Kim helps fellow Korean players adjust to MLB

PEORIA, Ariz. -- Before Ha-Seong Kim was a star infielder in the big leagues -- before tens of thousands of fans at Petco Park chanted his name nightly to the thud of three drum beats -- he was a 25-year-old in a foreign country unable to speak the language of his teammates.

Adjusting to the big leagues is hard enough. The increased velocity and the speed of the game were challenges for Kim -- as they are for just about any new Major Leaguer. But doing so without the comforts of home, eating food he wasn’t accustomed to, going to cities he didn’t know -- it was a separate challenge.

“I think definitely being lonely was a big problem for me,” Kim said recently via team interpreter David Lee. “Because you're playing baseball in a country that you've never been to before. So that's definitely not easy. Obviously the level of play here is much more difficult. But I was able to kind of get over it by leaning on past and present Korean players and their experiences. I just want to do the same thing for anyone else.”

Kim is living those words in a big way. At this point, he’s perhaps the most beloved player in the Padres’ clubhouse. Both Manny Machado and Fernando Tatis Jr. put Kim’s baseball card above the nameplates on their respective lockers. His work ethic and humility are revered by his teammates.

In the meantime, he’s a pretty darn good player, too. Kim won the utility Gold Glove Award last season, before making the full-time transition to shortstop this spring. He was worth 5.8 WAR according to Baseball Reference and received down-ballot MVP votes. Over the next week, he’s slated to star in the Seoul Series, Major League Baseball’s first regular-season games played in Korea.

But Kim isn’t forgetting how hard it was to reach this level of stardom -- how hard it was to adapt. And he wants to make that transition as easy as possible on fellow Korean ballplayers.

Before the Padres left for Seoul, Kim hosted multiple dinners at his Spring Training house, inviting other Korean ballplayers from around the Cactus League. That included new teammate Woo-Suk Go, who signed a two-year deal with San Diego during the offseason, and Jung Hoo Lee, who signed a six-year deal to play center field in San Francisco.

“I'm just blessed to have a player like Kim close to me,” Go said recently through team interpreter Leo Bae. “He's been there, done that, through those hard times. He has given me a lot of advice from his experience from day one. That helps me a lot. I just feel blessed to have him around.”

The dinners Kim hosted didn’t have much structure to them. Just Korean barbecue and conversation, some about baseball, some about life. As informal as could be. That was the point.

“I definitely think it's part of the Korean culture to bond, especially since there aren't too many Korean ballplayers in the U.S. right now,” Kim said. “So I thought that was a great idea to host a dinner with the younger ballplayers, give them advice as to what I've learned so far.

“Living in a foreign country is tough. It's not easy. I thought that having these kinds of dinners would just help them adjust and feel comfortable.”

Kim has become integral to the Padres and beloved in San Diego. But he struggled at the outset. His 2021 debut was by far his worst season in the big leagues, as he batted .202 with a .622 OPS.

In hindsight, it probably shouldn’t have been all that surprising. Kim had never played a season so long. He’d never traveled across multiple time zones, playing games at hours that threw off his internal clock. He’d also never faced Major League velocity -- and he spent much of that first summer in the batting cage, hitting off the velo machine.

“Kim or other Korean Major League players, when I watched them on TV, we're just excited to see them,” Go said. “You don't know what's going on behind the scenes. But when I actually stepped in the clubhouse, experienced an actual Major League Spring Training, you see more how this guy's been working hard. They've been going through a lot of stuff. You feel more appreciative about those guys. Just having Kim as a veteran around me is a super plus.”

That feeling goes both ways. Kim may be revered in San Diego now. He may be almost trilingual, able to converse with teammates with both Spanish and English phrases. He may be able to hit those upper-90s fastballs.

But with Go as a teammate, everything’s just a bit more comfortable.

“I want to help put his mind at ease -- and it's not just him, but my mind as well,” Kim said. “Just knowing the fact we have another Korean teammate on the same team -- that you can rely on and speak the same language -- I think this goes both ways. Me, feeling comfortable having another Korean player here, and same with Go. I want to make Go feel as comfortable as possible.”