Over the past two decades in South Korean baseball, the name Choi Jeong has been synonymous with consistency.

And that steady metronome of excellence has helped mold the 37-year-old Choi, veteran third baseman for the SSG Landers, into the all-time home run king in Korea Baseball Organization (KBO) history.

Choi belted his 468th career home run against the Lotte Giants on Wednesday. With the solo homer off starter Lee In-bok at Sajik Baseball Stadium in the southeastern city of Busan, Choi moved past former Samsung Lions star Lee Seung-yuop to the top of the KBO career home run list.

It was also Choi’s 10th home run of this season. He has now reached double figures in dingers in every season since his sophomore campaign in 2006. That 19-year run is the longest such streak in KBO history.

Choi has hit at least 20 homers in every season since 2016, and he is now 10 away from a record ninth straight year with at least 20. The Landers have 117 games left this year.

Overall, Choi has had a dozen 20-homer cam
paigns, tied with Lee for most in the KBO. In the annual home run race, Choi has finished inside the top 10 on 10 occasions and has been among the top five every year since 2019. He has claimed three home run crowns so far and is in second place this season.

Soft-spoken and modest to a fault, Choi has often insisted Lee should be considered the greatest home run hitter in KBO history, even if Choi himself ends up with more home runs than Lee.

Their KBO home run totals aside, Choi may just have a point.

Lee had his 467 homers in 1,906 games. Choi hit his 468th homer in his game No. 2,185 on Wednesday. Lee owns the all-time single-season record of 56 and was the first player to have two 50-homer campaigns. Choi has never hit more than 46 homers in a season.

Lee spent eight years of his prime in Japan and had 159 homers there. Lee could well have had 600 home runs in the KBO if he had spent his entire playing career here.

But this doesn’t mean Choi doesn’t belong in the same sentence as Lee.

They say the b
est ability in sports is availability, and Choi is the epitome of that. Since 2006, when Choi started seeing regular action, Choi has played 2,140 games, second only behind Lions catcher Kang Min-ho. Choi’s 8,882 plate appearances are more than anyone in the league in that span.

Choi has been able to stay mostly healthy and productive well into his 30s, despite the fact that he often faces injury risks inside the batter’s box.

Choi has been hit by a pitch a record 330 times in his career, most recently last Wednesday when he took a pitch by Kia Tigers starter Wil Crowe to his left side and suffered a bruised rib that kept him out of action for the following four games.

No active player has even been hit 200 times. Even in well over a century of history in Major League Baseball (MLB), the all-time leader in that category, Hughie Jennings, was struck by a pitch 287 times, and he started his career in 1891. The active MLB leader in hit-by-pitch is Anthony Rizzo of the New York Yankees with 216.

But Choi has
never backed away from the plate, looking to do damage on outside pitches even if it means sacrificing his body.

When Choi first came up and started driving balls into outfield seats as a teenager, fans started calling him “Strong Boy.” He was still in his early 20s when the old Wyverns played in six consecutive Korean Series and won three titles between 2007 and 2012. Choi was voted the Korean Series MVP in 2008, becoming the youngest player to win the honor at 21 years, eight months and eight days after driving in winning runs in Games 3 and 4.

That boy grew into a man before our eyes, shunning apparent interest from MLB teams about 10 years ago and eventually growing into the Wyverns/Landers franchise legend. Choi added two more Korean Series rings to his collection in 2018 and 2022, and the stoic star has come to embody the Landers’ gritty home city of Incheon with his understated excellence.

The word “understated” does a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence. Choi has long been a reluctant star. He ha
s often said he prefers to stay out of the spotlight and just play baseball. As he neared the home run record this month, Choi said on multiple occasions that he wanted to get the record as quickly as possible so that he could be done with media obligations and go about his business on the field.

Choi made his own wish come true, as he took care of the record before the calendar flipped to May. Choi’s reticent nature partly explains why his home run record chase hasn’t captured the imagination of baseball fans.

Whether he likes it or not, Choi’s assault on record books is ongoing.

Choi is already the league’s all-time leader with 1,386 runs scored, after surpassing Lee Seung-yuop’s mark last year. He was fourth in games played with 2,186, with Kang, the Lions catcher, having recently set the record and now leading the way with 2,260 games and counting. Choi is two years younger than Kang and could potentially finish his career ahead of the veteran backstop.

Choi Hyoung-woo of the Kia Tigers leads the RBI
department with 1,562, and Choi Jeong sits in third place with 1,476, with Lee Seung-yuop between the two active players at 1,498 RBIs.

Choi Jeong is in 11th place with 2,155 hits, with only three active players ahead of him, and he could be as high as sixth by the end of this season.

Source: Yonhap News Agency