Japanese Baseball Cards: Jeong Keun-Woo

Thursday, April 8, 2021

Jeong Keun-Woo

Jeong Keun-Woo, most recently with the LG Twins and longtime mainstay of the Korean National Team, retired at the end of last season. Jeong was originally drafted by the SK Wyverns in 2004 and made his debut with the team the following season and by mid-2006 was the team's regular second baseman. He remained with SK during their "dynasty years" in the late 00's/early 10's when they made the Korea Series six years in a row from 2007 to 2012 and won it three times (2007, 2008 & 2010). He left for the Hanwha Eagles as a free agent after the 2013 season and spent six years in Daejeon. He spent the 2020 season with the LG Twins.

He won three Golden Gloves at second base during his career (2006, 2009 and 2013). He never led the league in stolen bases but he had more than 20 steals in a season for 11 straight seasons (2006 to 2016) which is a KBO record. His 371 career steals are tied for the sixth most all time in Korea.

He played in five major international tournaments as a professional - the 2006, 2009 and 2013 World Baseball Classics, the 2008 Beijing Olympics and the 2015 Premier 12 - and was part of the gold medal winning team in 2008 and 2015. He played a key part in Korea's shocking comeback from being down 3-0 to Japan in the Premier 12 semi-final game, hitting a double to knock in the team's first run of the game in the top of the ninth and then later scoring the tying run as Korea rallied to score four runs that inning and hold on to win the game 4-3.

His first card that I know about is from the 2009 Konami Baseball Heroes WBC set. This is also the only card of him with the National Team that I know about. His first cataloged Korean card is from the 2010 KBO game set. He appears fairly regularly in the official KBO cards from Duall/SMG/Ntreev from 2012-16 and SCC from 2018-20. Here's all the cards I have of him: