Diamond Drama Ignites Korea

Home-run fever doesn't get better than this. In the United States, Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa are battling to re-shatter Major League Baseball's single-season home-run record. In South Korea, meanwhile, Lee Seung Yup is making his own run at history. You won't find Lee in most sports pages. But the kid with the sweet smooth swing has already broken Korea's single-season mark and has his sights on legendary Japanese star Sadaharu Oh's Asian record of 55 roundtrippers, set in 1964.

If he can cope with the pressure, that is. All of this attention is great, says Lee, a sinewy 23-year-old who exudes a boyish charm. But all I want to do is hone my baseball skills. The Samsung Lions' first baseman is used to a certain level of acclaim. In 1997 he was named the league's most valuable player, and last year he battled American expatriate Tyrone Woods for the home-run crown. (Woods ended up on top with 42 long balls, breaking the country's single-season record; Lee settled for a respectable 38.)

But things got crazy this year, especially early in August, when Lee blasted home run No. 43, breaking Woods' record and effectively serving notice that Oh's mark was in peril. (The baseball seasons in Korea and Japan are roughly the same length, making a comparison between the two sluggers' feats meaningful.) The land of the morning calm suddenly woke up to a new national hero, who wasn't sure he wanted all the attention. The Korean press, the TV crews, all these people wanted a piece of him and it wore him down, says Bubba Smith, one of two Americans on the Lions' roster. Performing in the fishbowl, Lee slipped into the worst slump of his career, going homerless for 12 consecutive games. It has been difficult to watch, says Smith. He's such a nice, polite guy--always a class act. He listened to everybody, and suddenly he was hitting the ball straight up in the air instead of out of the park.

As the slump deepened, Lee also had to deal with the media's demands. What's wrong with you? journalists started asking. Why aren't you hitting homers? Lee asked the Lions for help in deflecting the blitz. The club asked the media to leave me alone, says Lee, in characteristically modest tones, so that I can relieve all the stress and pressure about hitting home runs. Indeed, Lee now gives fewer interviews, and the club has discouraged the media from mobbing the star.

Jung Hee Don, a sports reporter for a Korean television network, says the country's obsession with Lee is partly a function of broader trends in society. Lee came along and broke this record when the economy was down and people were looking for a hero, says Jung. And the more we report on him the more we like him. He's modest, his private life is clean, he tries to be good. He is Korea's new hope.

Lee isn't the first Korean athlete to garner such attention. When Park Chan Ho won 14 games for the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1997, the Korean press covered his every move, elevating him to near-godlike status. Perhaps the acclaim was too much. Park has a feeble 7-10 win-loss record this year and an unimpressive 5.78 earned-run average. Excessive adulation similarly took its toll on golf sensation Pak Se Ri, who shot to stardom in 1998 after recording one of the most impressive rookie performances ever, in any sport. After winning four titles--including two majors--and firing a record low round of 61, the 21-year-old golfer returned to her home country so mentally exhausted that she had to check into a hospital for supervised rest. Her play since then has been uneven.

Lee, for his part, is obsessed with trying to regain his focus. His family says his sudden fame has made him more pensive. We used to have a lot of fun playing pool and listening to music together, says his older brother, Lee Jong Ho. Now he's real quiet and just thinks about baseball. A perfectionist who rarely offers excuses for his performance, Lee has achieved a level of grace and maturity rarely seen, for example, in the United States, where young stars tend to grow big egos. Lee is like an evergreen tree, says Suh Suk Jin, his coach in high school, where Lee was a star pitcher. He stays the same all year round, every year, never changing. When he played for me he just worked on his game, never complaining about anything and he's not complaining now.

The question for the moment is whether Lee can get back on track to make a run at Oh's 35-year-old mark. Through last Friday, Lee had 49 home runs, with 14 games remaining. His chase is becoming a long shot, but even if he fails to break the record, Lee's got many good years ahead of him. And that begs another question. Will Lee jump to a more competitive level in Japan or the U.S.? No Korean slugger has ever made it to the American big leagues. (Though several pitchers have in recent years.) Could Lee adjust to the faster and trickier pitches? Does he have the power to blast the ball out of the larger parks? Lee is struggling now, says teammate Smith. But keep an eye on this guy. He has the swing and determination to go as far as he wants.