Passport loss foils pitcher's dreams for World Baseball Classic

HONOLULU, Feb. 15 (Yonhap) -- Former Major League pitcher Kim Byung-hyun has been
excluded from South Korea's national baseball team, which is now training in
Hawaii in preparation for the upcoming World Baseball Classic (WBC), the squad's
manager said Sunday.

"I heard Kim is now unable to join the Korean baseball team because he has lost
his passport. So I decided to remove his name from the final WBC roster as the
schedule is too tight ahead of the roster deadline slated for Feb. 22," said
manager Kim In-sik.
Earlier this week, the Korean baseball squad arrived in Honolulu, Hawaii, to
prepare for the WBC regional preliminary round in Japan scheduled to begin March
5.
Each team has to submit its final list of 28 players out of 32 candidates to the
WBC organizing committee by Feb. 22. The final roster can be changed only if a
player is out because of an injury.
Pitcher Kim, 30, who has previously played for the Pittsburgh Pirates, Boston Red
Sox and Arizona Diamondbacks in the MLB, is still in South Korea. According to
baseball officials, Kim realized his passport had been lost shortly before he was
to fly to Hawaii on Sunday. He attempted to obtain a new passport but was told
that processing may take several days.
Kim's manager said he decided to exclude the pitcher from the final list as well
as the training session, citing the need for sufficient time to check up on
individual players' conditions.
A right-hander, Kim has not pitched at a match for nearly a year as he failed to
sign with an MLB club last season. He trained individually in the U.S. over the
winter but never reported his schedule to his national squad coaches.
Kim made his MLB debut in 1999 and has recorded 54 wins and 86 saves in his
career. He was expected to play a major role in leading his Korean team and to
get another chance to show off his talent to MLB scouts.
The WBC, organized by U.S. Major League Baseball in 2006, is an international
championship tournament joined by 16 nations -- including South Korea, Japan, the
United States, Mexico and South Africa. After the regional preliminaries, eight
teams will compete in San Diego starting on March 15.
The South Korean team finished at the semi-finals at the inauguration tournament
while Japan won the first trophy of the WBC.
brk@yna.co.kr
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