2009 World Baseball Classic Round Up - Korean Edition

South Korea's best performance in a World Baseball Classic happened in the 2009 tournament.  They were riding a Gold Medal victory in the previous summer's Beijing Olympic games and rolled to a 5-2 record in pool play, tied with Japan for the second best record overall.  Japan and Korea had split the four games they had played against each other - each team was responsible for the other team's only losses in pool play.  Japan beat Korea in the final game of Pool 1 in San Diego which forced Korea to play 6-1 Venezuela in a semi-final game to determine who played in the final.  Korea broke out for 5 runs in the top of the first against Venezuela and handily won the game 10-2.  Japan defeated the US 9-4 in their semi-final match up which set up the final to be the fifth bout of the tournament between the two teams.  Japan led 3-2 with two outs in the bottom of the ninth but Korea tied the game when Lee Jong-Wook scored on a Lee Bum-Ho single off closer Yu Darvish.  Korea's lead was short-lived however as Japan rallied to score two runs on a two-out single from Ichiro of Lim Chang-Yong.  Darvish set down Korea in order in the bottom of the 10th and Japan won their second straight WBC.  Korea has not advanced beyond the first round in either of the two WBCs since then (although they won Gold and Silver in the 2015 and 2019 Premier 12 tournaments respectively).

Topps had taken over the US rights to make cards for the tournament from Upper Deck and (as I've pointed out before) they ultimately issued 306 cards in 10 separate "sets" in 2009:

- a 55 card box set
- a 20 card insert set with Bowman
- a 25 card insert set with Topps 2
- a 10 card "Redemption" set
- a 13 card eTopps set
- a 5 card Allen & Ginters Box Topper set
- a 100 card Topps Chrome insert set
- a 40 card Bowman Chrome insert set
- a 3 card subset in the Topps Update set
- a 35 card subset/insert set in the Bowman Draft Picks And Prospects set

Despite Korea being the runner up in the tournament, Topps only included 18 cards of eight players in these sets (18 base cards - I'm not counting the plethora of parallel versions of these cards in the count).  To make matters worse, one of those cards - a Topps Chrome card of Kim Hyun-Soo -featured an incorrect photo, that of team manager Kim In-Sik who is 41 years older than the player the card was supposed to be for.  Half the cards were for Lee Jin-Young (5 cards) and Lee Dae-Ho (4 cards).  In addition, Topps included relic cards of two players who did not have "regular" cards - Lee Jae-Woo and Ryu Hyun-Jin.

However, Topps was not the only company that did WBC cards that year.  Konami had the rights to do a Japanese set and they did an outstanding job.  They issued a 253 card set called something like "Baseball Heroes WBC" that included the entire rosters of the four teams that made the semi-finals - Korea, Japan, Venezuela and the US - along with 12 players for each of the other 12 teams except Panama which only had 8 players included.  In addition, Konami included two 12 card insert sets.  One was for the "All Tournament Team" which featured three Korean players (Kim Hyun-Soo, Kim Tae-Kyun and Lee Bum-Ho).  The other set is called "Special" I think and features three players from each of the final four teams.  The three Korean players were Ko Young-Min, Lim Chang-Yong and Yoon Suk-Min.

Here's a breakdown of the WBC cards available for each of the 28 players on the Korean roster (not including parallels or relic cards):

Player	Cards
Bong, Jung-Keun	Konami #125, Redemption #9
Choi, Jeong	Konami #129
Chong, Tae-Hyon	Konami #121
Choo, Shin-Soo	Topps Chrome #W81, Konami #136
Jang, Won-Sam	Konami #117
Jeong, Keun-Woo	Konami #131
Jong, Hyun-Wook	Konami #119
Kang, Min-Ho	Konami #128
Kim, Hyun-Soo	Bowman Chrome #BCW53, Konami #141, Konami All Tournament Team #12, Topps Chrome  #W87
Kim, Kwang-Hyun	Bowman Chrome #BCW34, Konami #123
Kim, Tae-Kyun	Bowman Chrome #BCW23, eTopps #12, Konami #135, Konami All Tournament Team #5, Topps Chrome #W18
Ko, Young-Min	Konami #133, Konami Special #6
Lee, Bum-Ho	Konami #130, Konami All Tournament Team #7
Lee, Dae Ho	Bowman Chrome #BCW24, eTopps #10, Konami #132, Redemption #8, Topps Chrome #W12
Lee, Jae-Woo	Konami #115
Lee, Jin-Young	Box Set #32, eTopps #3, Konami #139, Redemption #1, Topps 2 #BCS2, Topps Chrome #W35
Lee, Jong-Wook	Konami #140
Lee, Seung-Ho	Konami #120
Lee, Taek-Keun	Konami #138
Lee, Yong-Kyu	Konami #137
Lim, Chang-Yong	Konami #116, Konami Special #4
Lim, Tae-Hun	Konami #124
Oh, Seung Hwan	Konami #118
Park, Ki-Hyuk	Konami #134
Park, Kyung-Oan	Konami #127
Ryu, Hyun-Jin	Konami #126
Son, Min-Han	Konami #114
Yoon, Suk-Min	Bowman Chrome #BCW51, Konami #122, Konami Special #5

What I'd like to do now is show a card of each player on the roster, choosing them in such a way to showcase at least one card from all the sets.  I have two problems with doing this.  The first is that I don't have any of eTopps cards.  The second is that Lee Jin-Young was the only Korean player included in both the Box Set and the Topps 2 WBC inserts so I'll be showing him twice.

Topps Redemption #9

Konami Baseball Heroes WBC #129

Konami Baseball Heroes WBC #121

Topps Chrome #W81

Konami Baseball Heroes WBC #117

Konami Baseball Heroes WBC #131

Konami Baseball Heroes WBC #119

Konami Baseball Heroes WBC #128

Konami Baseball Heroes WBC All Tournament Team #12

Bowman Chrome #BCW34

Topps Chrome #W18

Konami Baseball Heroes WBC #133

Konami Baseball Heroes WBC #130

Bowman Chrome #BCW24

Konami Baseball Heroes WBC #115

Box Set #32

Topps 2 WBC #BCS2

Konami Baseball Heroes WBC #140

Konami Baseball Heroes WBC #120

Konami Baseball Heroes WBC #136

Konami Baseball Heroes WBC #137

Konami Baseball Heroes WBC #116

Konami Baseball Heroes WBC #124

Konami Baseball Heroes WBC #118

Konami Baseball Heroes WBC #134

Konami Baseball Heroes WBC #127

Konami Baseball Heroes WBC #126

Konami Baseball Heroes WBC #114

Konami Baseball Heroes WBC "Special" #5

There's one other Korean player that I should mention.  Topps issued an uncut sheet of promo cards for the box set at each of the sites for the tournament's first round - Tokyo, Mexico City, Toronto and San Juan.  Each sheet featured two cards of a player for each team at each site.  Topps apparently made the sheets up before the team rosters were final (and before the box set's checklist was final) as there are a number of players on these sheets who ultimately didn't appear in the WBC that year.  One of these was Kim Byung-Hyun who reportedly lost his passport and was therefore unable to travel outside of Korea to play for the team.  Here's his card from the sheet - I suspect the picture is from the 2006 tournament as he wore #49 for that team and that's the 2006 uniform: