Long time KBO infielder Kim Min-jae passed away from cancer this past week at age 53. Kim was born in Busan and joined his hometown team, the Lotte Giants, after graduating from high school in 1991. He spent eleven seasons with them before leaving for the SK Wyverns as a free agent after the 2001 season. After four seasons, he moved on as a free agent again, this time to the Hanwha Eagles where he played the last four years of his career. He was the first player in KBO history to play in over 2100 games although his 2,113 total games played has since been passed by other players.
He was considered a defensive whiz and was frequently selected for the Korean National Team, most significantly for the 2006 World Baseball Classic and the 2008 Beijing Olympics, where Korea won the Gold Medal.
Following his playing career, he coached for half the KBO teams - Hanwha in 2009-12, the Doosan Bears in 2013, the KT Wiz from 2014 to 2016, Lotte in 2017-18, back to Doosan for 2019-20, the SSG Landers from 2021 to 2023 and back to Lotte in 2024 and 2025. He also was a coach for the Korean National Team for the 2023 WBC.
Because there weren't many KBO cards produced during his playing career, he didn't have a lot of baseball cards.
TCDB lists six although one of those is an autographed card and one is kinda-sorta an insert card. I have three of the four base cards along with the insert - it's from the "Future Watch" insert set in the 2006 SP Authentic set.
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| 1999 Teleca #47 |
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| 1999 Teleca Premium #48 |
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| 2000 Teleca #41 |
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| 2006 SP Authentic "Future Watch" WBC-69 |
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