One day in late September, before a game in San Francisco, Ha-Seong Kim considered both the near future and his distant home continent. The unveiling of another class of Gold Glove winners was a little more than a month away. It was not lost on the San Diego Padres second baseman that in all the decades of the award’s existence, no infielder born on the other side of the Pacific had gotten to hoist it.
Until, perhaps, this year.
“The whole Asian baseball community and young kids are watching me and playing that position and thinking about coming over here,” Kim said through interpreter.