Despite the sluggish start to the season, Tribe outfielder/basher/awesomer Shin-soo Choo is a superstar, even if no one’s talking about him. You know that, though, so we’ll just skip right to the sweet stuff.
Sports Illustrated has a nice piece about Choo — his life in Korea, his current mega-watt superstar status there, his work ethic, his family, etc. — that is well worth your time. Here’s our favorite part:
Choo is powered by a work ethic that comes from his father, a former boxer and track athlete who always told him, “In sports, nobody cares about who finishes second.” Says Shapiro, “Chris [Antonetti] and I stay on East Coast time during spring training [in Arizona], so we’re in the weight room at 5 a.m., and he’s the only player there, riding the bike before the full workout and the full spring training day.”
Choo’s daily routine includes hundreds of fingertip push-ups to strengthen his wrists and hands, dozens of swings off a tee, as well as a bowl of piping hot noodle soup, which he has after pregame BP sessions. Every night at home he takes 150 swings with a bat just before he goes to sleep. “I get home, I don’t want to think about baseball. He gets home, and all he’s thinking about is baseball,” says his former teammate and roommate at Tacoma, Rich Dorman, now the pitching coach at Clinton. “He’s not thinking about 20-20 anymore. He’s not even thinking about 30-30. He wants 40-40. That’s how driven he is.”
This article appears in Apr 20-26, 2011.
Now that’s dedication to himself,baseball,and his father’s word’s.I am glad he is on the Cleveland Indian’s baseball team.I wish him the best.
“Despite the sluggish start to the season” WHAT is this guy talking about?? They are tied with having the best record in the league. The Indians have already swept three ball clubs.
Nobody is talking about him? I wonder if Vince has ever been to a game. “Choooooooo” chants are all over the stadium. Time to find someone else to cover these types of articles.
I believe he was talking about Choo’s sluggish start (.214 BA, .576 OPS and a fair number of strikeouts on a relatively luck-neutral BABIP) and the lack of discussion on Choo’s abilities in the mainstream media compared to players in larger, more success-oriented markets.
That aside, Choo’s a beast. The Tribe Train rolls on!