No words were uttered in the Dodgers bullpen. It would have been futile to even try. Chan Ho Park, then a baby-faced 20-year-old, hardly spoke a lick of English. And bullpen coach Mark Cresse didn’t know any Korean.
Instead, the highly touted South Korean prospect was notified of what his team needed with a large cue card. Translators were not allowed on the field at that time. So Park’s only form of communication with coaches consisted of pre-written Korean phrases.
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“Chan Ho, you’re up,” Park recalled Cresse’s message reading.
“How many more pitches do you need to get ready?” said another.
“I’m OK,” he was able to respond, leading to his entering the game shortly thereafter.
On that day, April 8, 1994, Kent Mercker threw a no-hitter for the Braves in Dodger Stadium. But that game’s lasting impact may have quietly come in the presence of the Los Angeles reliever who allowed two runs in one inning of mop-up duty.
Park’s arrival in that game marked the first time a Korean player ever appeared in the major leagues. It was a historic milestone for a sport that has since expanded globally, and Park’s arrival meant far more to the trajectory of baseball history than how he pitched.
“You’re not really thinking, ‘Oh, he’s Korean’ or whatever,” said Hall of Fame slugger Fred McGriff, who was the first batter Park faced. “You’re seeing this pitcher that you want to bust up.”
McGriff, who walked, might not have appreciated the significance at that moment. But he, like so many others who were in Park’s orbit, now understands the importance of Park’s imprint on this game.
This week, MLB is at Gocheok Sky Dome for its first regular-season games in South Korea. Fittingly, the series features the Dodgers, the team that signed Park, and the Padres, for whom he now serves as a baseball operations advisor.
Park, 50, pitched parts of 17 years in the Majors. He spent nine seasons with the Dodgers, three with the Rangers, and had stints with the Padres, Mets, Phillies, Yankees and Pirates. He posted a 4.36 career ERA and once reached 234 innings during his All-Star season in 2001.
Before the Dodgers and Padres actually take the field at Gocheok Sky Dome, the man who started it all will take the mound first.
It’s fitting, of course. This series never would have happened if not for Park, and everything he navigated. Throwing the first pitch — not just in front of his country but also millions of baseball fans around the world — is a tangible reflection of what he’s meant to the game.
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“I think that it’s sort of a culmination for him,” said Dodgers manager Dave Roberts, a former teammate of Park’s. “He was a pioneer as a Korean-born player to come to the States, and to be a star player.”
No one knew what he would become, however, after that very first inning in 1994. Dodgers manager Tommy Lasorda handed him a baseball after that outing. He didn’t understand the magnitude. So he went into the clubhouse, and asked his translator.
‘That’s your first strikeout ball,’ he was told. At the time, Park didn’t care. He felt embarrassed for allowing two runs. He quickly learned, however, to appreciate what all his milestones meant.
“It’s all meaningful for me since then,” Park said. “So every new ball or home run ball, base hit ball, all were firsts, right? So I started collecting the balls. That’s all in a museum in my hometown in Korea.”
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Peter O’Malley would not have written a letter every week to simply any player on Double-A San Antonio’s roster. He wouldn’t personally check up on the progress of all his organization’s prospects. But when the Dodgers team president and CEO first met Park and his family in Seoul in 1993, he made a promise.
“I told his parents, ‘I’m going to take care of your son as well as I would take care of my own son,’” O’Malley recently recalled. “That was not planned. It just came out. And it was sincere. I meant it. I just wanted him to be a success because I really liked him and I admired him.”
A significant part of O’Malley’s legacy is growing the game by adding players from different backgrounds, countries and cultures. The Dodgers were already known for their historical signing of Jackie Robinson in 1947. But O’Malley, now 86, oversaw a more modern wave of inclusion. He helped expand baseball’s presence in Mexico when he signed Fernando Valenzuela in 1979. Hideo Nomo became the first Japanese player to permanently move to the majors in 1995. And, of course, there’s Park.
“None of us knew how big it would be, but it was historic for sure,” said O’Malley. “And I wanted everyone to understand that, that it was a first, we were going to be all in.”
“The beautiful thing about baseball is that we speak the same language because we love the same game, and we play the same game.” 😌
We had the privilege of hosting a baseball clinic for local youth alongside Chan Ho Park, Ha-Seong Kim, and Woo-Suk Go! pic.twitter.com/26pMapfFV7
— San Diego Padres (@Padres) March 16, 2024
The Dodgers first scouted Park at a multi-country high school tournament in Long Beach, California. Then, they saw him again at an international amateur tournament in Buffalo, New York.
After that showcase, according to then-Dodgers GM Fred Claire, one of their scouts, Jim Stoeckel, approached Park. Stoeckel coached the Dutch National Team, and had extensive experience in the international baseball community.
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He approached one of the Korean coaches, and asked to connect him with Park.
“‘Chan Ho, we have an interest. We would like to sign you,’” Claire recalled Stoeckel saying. “And Chan Ho, as Jim tells the story, just broke out in a huge smile. That was his dream.”
The Dodgers had been interested in other Korean players at the time, Claire said. Ironically, Park wasn’t even their top target. But the talent, combined with his personality, made Park a perfect fit. The negotiation with his former agent, Steve Kim, was fairly straightforward.
The press conference to announce Park’s signing was not at Dodger Stadium. Instead, the team rented out part of a hotel in Koreatown. The day after the press conference, O’Malley picked up a bunch of copies of the two Los Angeles-based Korean newspapers in circulation at the time.
He brought them to the team’s offices and left them for employees to pick up and look at. O’Malley had long wanted to grow the game of baseball. He’d already invited a KBO team to Dodgers spring training. He’d been to Korea half a dozen times.
All of that helped the Dodgers not only sign Park, but nurture him in that environment. Even if O’Malley loved seeing the Korean news clippings, this wasn’t about publicity. It was about growth.
Park’s welcome to the United States came from on top of an equipment trunk. The Dodgertown complex in Vero Beach, Florida has been the site of plenty of historic moments for the franchise. But by Park’s rookie year, it had little space for the players to actually eat. So, they’d take the trunks the clubhouse staff had filled with gear for the drive from Los Angeles and sit on those.
Those Dodgers were young; Just one notable contributor remained from their World Series run in 1988. Orel Hershiser, the Cy Young winner that season, was given an extra assignment that spring by O’Malley and manager Tommy Lasorda: show Park around. So they sat on crates, 14 years apart in age and a world apart in experience with only an interpreter and baseball to help bridge the gap.
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They’d talk pitching. Grips. Workouts. As Hershiser marveled at Park’s physical gifts, he sought to replicate the rookie’s training regimen that spring, mimicking the series of body weight squats and lunges with twists that Park employed to build his powerful lower half. The routine blew Hershiser away.
There was only one problem.
“The next day,” Hershiser said, “I could barely walk.”
The Dodgers and O’Malley went out of their way to try to make Park comfortable, from pairing him with Hershiser to helping find him housing to ensuring that each of the various mementos and firsts were preserved.
But Park still suffered from acute homesickness during his first professional season. His stint in the majors was historic. But it was also brief. He made two April appearances, totaling just four innings, before he was optioned to Double A.
There, he said, there were further cultural adjustments. Even with local Korean fans flocking to all his starts, Texas felt particularly far away from home. It lacked the sheer number of Korean restaurants that populated the Los Angeles area.
Park heard Spanish spoken nearly as frequently as English, a language he’d been working hard to learn. And he missed his former life in Gongju, South Korea, all while pitching in a league that was nowhere near the bright lights of Dodger Stadium.
“He went through some homesickness, as anybody does,” said San Antonio Missions manager Tom Beyers. He, at one point, was able to find some places to eat in San Antonio that had some Korean food.
“He told me, ‘I want to take you Tommy, and I want to have you try some of the dishes from Korea.’ So I actually went out to dinner with him. I said, ‘Alright. Whatever you put in front of me, I’m gonna try.’ That was a great evening.”
By the time he returned to the big leagues, Park still had much to endure. Those young Dodgers were starting to sprout stars, from Mike Piazza to Eric Karros to Raul Mondesi.
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And then there was Park, whose mandate was far more complex.
“We were just trying to survive,” Karros said of his American teammates, before shifting his attention to Park. “The amount of responsibility he had was something that none of us could ever even (understand), whether we’re young, whether you’re Orel. You can’t fathom that.”
That didn’t stop them from trying to poke fun at their new teammate, or subject him to rookie hazing. Karros recalled a time in Chicago in 1996, Park’s second partial season in the big leagues, when it was Park’s turn for “initiation.” The Dodgers had won a getaway day game against the Cubs, and, as Karros recalled, Mondesi snuck back into the visiting clubhouse.
As became custom, they’d cut up the suits the players were mandated to wear on travel days, leaving something unseemly for the rookies to wear instead.
When Park saw the cut-up suit in his locker, he refused to get on the bus. He eventually got on wearing his game pants and jacket after tossing three innings. The suit, it turned out, had been a gift from Park’s mother upon his departure for the States.
“So I look back at that and man, that was probably not handled (well),” Karros said. “Obviously nowadays, there’s no chance that that would ever even be a thought.”
The tiff created a stir at the time, drawing a terse takedown at the time from Park’s then-agent, Steve Kim, and shining a light on a tradition of rookie-related pranks gone awry.
“You can call it chemistry,” Lasorda told the Los Angeles Times then. “Some teams like to play golf together, this team likes to cut up clothes together.”
By the time Park established himself as a big leaguer, however, he was quick to show his new teammates a glimpse into his world. One night, Park offered to take Karros and Piazza out to the bustling Koreatown neighborhood in Los Angeles.
“He had Koreatown dialed in,” Karros said. “He may have been bigger than the president back in Korea. You knew he was the guy (there). It was his way of trying to mesh, trying to bond.”
A total of 28 Korean players have now appeared in the majors. Seven are currently in the league. Four, including Park, have been selected as All-Stars. One won an All-Star game. Another, Byung-hyun Kim, is a World Series champion.
This is a legacy that Park himself is modest about. But those who know his story believe it’s richly earned.
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“He was a pioneer for the Korean baseball players,” said Padres infielder Ha-Seong Kim. “He was a role model for not just me, but for all Korean players who have a dream of playing in the big leagues.”
More and more Korean players have begun signing with MLB teams. Just this offseason, the Giants signed Jung Hoo Lee to a $113 million contract and the Padres added Lee’s brother-in-law, reliever Woo-Suk Go. In the last couple of decades, the Korea Baseball Organization has established a foothold among the world’s top professional leagues.
Park’s story is not detached from that growth. After he earned his way into the Dodgers’ rotation, his starts were like “the Super Bowl every five days,” said KBO analyst Daniel Kim, who will help broadcast this week’s Seoul Series for ESPN. Televisions were brought into classrooms so students could watch Park pitch. In the late 1990s, he provided hope to a country devastated by the Asian financial crisis.
But on a larger scale, the Dodgers’ decision to give him a shot undeniably helped alter the course of international baseball history.
“The organization took a big step bringing the first player for Korea to play in the Major Leagues,” said longtime Dodgers coach Manny Mota, who was on the staff in 1994.
“That’s part of the history. I’m glad I was there to be a part of that particular moment and be a part of that history. Chan Ho, he had a lot of dedication. He took advantage of the opportunity that the Dodgers brought him.”
Chan Ho Park, who 30 years ago became the first @MLB player ever born in South Korea and pitched for both the @Dodgers and @Padres, will have ceremonial first pitch honors before the #SeoulSeries on March 20th. pic.twitter.com/DeG0l4C4Ue
— MLB Communications (@MLB_PR) March 14, 2024
And now he and all around him will have a chance to celebrate that moment, and the journey that followed.
“To now have his former teammates, and the team that he played with, come to his homeland, I think it’s come full circle. It’s only fitting that he throws out the first pitch,” Dave Roberts said.
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Thirty years ago, Park was a kid on his own in a foreign country. The food, the language and the culture were completely different. Now, he’s a grown man. He speaks comfortably in two languages. He works in a front office for an organization with a significant international player presence. He has a wife and three daughters, and he sends an annual Christmas card of his family to many of the people who helped get him here.
When he throws that first pitch, it will represent his legacy in the game, and the life he built alongside it.
“I think they should have done it way before, but that’s the timing — my 30th-anniversary year, and MLB opening the season in Korea,” Park said of Korea finally hosting MLB games. “That’s a huge deal for Koreans and for myself, too.
“I think I’m the happiest person for that.”
(Top photo of Chan Ho Park from 2000: Larry Goren/ Four Seam Images via Associated Press)