Doraemon, a Japanese sci-fi cartoon character, is a jack-of-all-trades who can pull anything out of his pocket whenever he needs it.Kim Xiang (21), a catcher in his third year with Kiwoom, has been able to do just that whenever he needs a hit, just like Doraemon in the cartoon.Kim, who was promoted to the first team on March 10, has continued his breakout season, batting .438 (14-for-32) with seven RBIs in 17 games this season.In the three-game sweep of the KT Wiz, he went 2-for-4 with a double and two RBIs in a 7-0 victory.Speaking at the Gocheok Sky Dome in Seoul on Feb. 2, Kim said, “I feel like it’s gone by so fast since I came up to the first team. As I kept starting, the time went by quickly,” Kim reflected on the past month.When Kim first broke into the first team, his entrance song was the theme song from Doraemon.When he stepped into the batter’s box to the tune of “Ang Ang Ang I love you so much, Doraemon,” he knew something was wrong.”The last letter of my name (Ang) is in the Doraemon theme song, and I’ve heard it as a nickname since I was a kid, so I handpicked it for my entrance,” he says, adding, “It’s not easy when that song comes on when you’re losing by a big score, so nowadays I just change it to a hip-hop song.Even though he didn’t play many games, Kim made a strong impression as he continued his hitting streak that no one expected.With a .227 career batting average in the Futures (second division) league, he’s showing off his hidden batting prowess against first division pitchers.”Honestly, I wasn’t a good batting player since elementary school, so I was told to ‘just play defense’ from a young age,” Kim reflects. “It wasn’t until I got an aluminum bat in middle school that I got better, but when I got to high school, I knew I had to focus on defense again.”Kim Tae-wan, the secondary hitting coach of the Kiwoom team, helped him develop his current batting prowess.Kim, who was prone to bad pitches and didn’t know how to fight pitchers, worked with the first team to establish his own strike zone where he could hit pitches with the goal of getting on base.”Coach Kim taught me how to fight pitchers, saying, ‘Try to be desperate again. You have to be more desperate. Make sure you don’t look back in 10 years and regret it,’ and it stuck with me.”What makes Kim even more desperate are his parents.Born in Hwasun-gun, South Jeolla Province, and graduated from Gwangju University, Dongseongcho, Dongseongjung, and Dongseong High School, he was the starting catcher for Dongseong High School in high school and helped lead the team to the Cheongryonggi championship.”Because my parents are older, I sometimes thought for a while (when baseball didn’t work out) that I should go down to my hometown,” said Kim, who is more than 40 years older than his father 토토사이트 . “I thought it would be a nice gesture to show them how hard and desperate I am to play baseball, so I made up my mind.”