(LEAD) Doosan Bears manager Lee Seung-yuop resigns

South Korean baseball legend Lee Seung-yuop resigned as manager of the Doosan Bears on Monday, taking the fall for the team’s disappointing season.

The Bears announced Monday that Lee offered to step down and the club accepted it, effective immediately.

Lee, second on the Korea Baseball Organization (KBO) home run list with 467, was in the final year of his three-year contract.

Through Sunday’s action, the Bears were in ninth place among 10 teams with a record of 23-32-3 (wins-losses-ties). They had made the postseason, reserved for the top five teams, in each of the past two years.

“We’d like to thank Lee Seung-yuop for his hard work over the past three seasons,” the Bears said in a statement. “He made the decision to hold himself accountable for the poor record this season and to shake things up within the team. And we accepted his resignation offer after careful deliberation.”

The final blow for Lee may have come over the weekend, in the form of consecutive 1-0 losses to last-place Kiwoom Heroes. The Bears managed only two hits in Saturday’s loss and failed to score despite getting nine hits in Sunday’s game.

The Bears said Cho Sung-hwan, their quality control coach, will serve as interim manager beginning with Tuesday’s game against the Kia Tigers.

Lee, 48, took over the Bears after the 2022 season, in which they finished in ninth place following seven consecutive trips to the Korean Series. Lee, who retired in 2017, had no prior coaching or managerial experience.

In 2023, the Bears finished fifth at 74-68-2 and reached the wild card series, where they were eliminated by the NC Dinos. Despite taking the team back to the postseason, Lee was not a popular manager among Bears fans and was booed while addressing them after their final home game of that season.

In 2024, the Bears had the identical record of 74-68-2 but finished a spot higher in fourth place. However, they lost to the fifth-seed KT Wiz in the wild card series, becoming the first No. 4 seed to fail to get past that phase.

The Bears made wholesale changes to their foreign player contingent for 2025, signing new pitchers Cole Irvin and Zach Logue, and bringing in new outfielder Jake Cave. However, all three players struggled out of the gate, and the Bears have also not been able to overcome spring-training injuries to key pitchers, such as starter Gwak Been and reliever Hong Geon-hui.

The Bears have not reached .500 in winning percentage since sitting 7-7-0 on April 8.

The failed managerial stint with the Bears will go down as a rare blemish on Lee’s legendary career.

Lee spent his entire 15-year KBO career with the Samsung Lions, his hometown team based in the southeastern city of Daegu, and played eight years in between in Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball. Lee still owns the KBO’s single-season home run record with 56 from the 2003 season and remains the only player with five regular-season MVP awards.

On the career lists, Lee is third in RBIs (1,498), third in runs (1,355), third in total bases (4,077) and second in doubles (464). Along with his 467 home runs in South Korea, Lee launched 159 home runs in Japan.

Lee won four Korean Series titles and two Japan Series titles.

The KBO celebrated its 40th anniversary in 2022 by assembling a team of its 40 greatest players ever, and Lee ranked fourth in voting by fans and a panel of experts.

Internationally, Lee hit some of the most iconic home runs in South Korean baseball history while helping the country to the gold medal at the 2008 Olympics and bronze medal at the 2000 Olympics.