Choi Hyoung-woo Hits the Oldest Grand Slam in KBO History
On August 26, 2026, at Gocheok Sky Dome in Seoul, Samsung Lions veteran slugger Choi Hyoung-woo stepped into the batter’s box in the top of the first inning, batting cleanup against the Kiwoom Heroes. Facing him on the mound was rookie pitcher Park Jun-hyun, a young arm still early in his professional career. What happened next turned an otherwise ordinary early-season at-bat into a new chapter of KBO League record books: Choi drove a grand slam over the fence, clearing the bases and instantly becoming the oldest player in the history of South Korea’s top professional baseball league to hit a grand slam.
At the moment the ball left the yard, Choi Hyoung-woo was 42 years, 8 months, and 10 days old. That age now stands as the new benchmark for the oldest grand slam in KBO League history, surpassing a record that had stood untouched for two full decades. The moment was reported by South Korean outlets including MoneyToday, JoongAng Economy News, and Segye Ilbo, each confirming the same set of details: the date, the opponent, the inning, the pitcher, and the age-record significance of the blast.
For American readers who may not follow the KBO League closely, the easiest entry point into why this moment matters is a comparison every baseball fan already understands instinctively. Major League Baseball has a long tradition of celebrating “oldest player to do X” records — moments when a veteran defies the assumption that a player’s skills are supposed to fade well before their forties. A player in his forties stepping into the box against a pitcher young enough to be his son, and delivering the game’s most dramatic single swing — a bases-loaded home run — is a story that needs no translation. It is baseball’s oldest kind of theater: youth on the mound, experience at the plate, and experience winning in the most emphatic way possible.
The Record-Breaking Slam
The record-setting swing came in a regular-season KBO League game between the Samsung Lions and the Kiwoom Heroes, played at Gocheok Sky Dome — South Korea’s only fully domed baseball stadium, located in Seoul. Batting cleanup for the Lions, Choi Hyoung-woo came to the plate in the top of the first inning with the bases loaded. On the mound for Kiwoom stood rookie pitcher Park Jun-hyun, making his case as a young arm still building his professional resume. Choi turned on a pitch and sent it out of the yard for a grand slam, instantly plating four runs and giving Samsung an early lead.
The runs themselves were significant in the context of the game, but it was the record attached to the swing that turned the moment into national sports news. At 42 years, 8 months, and 10 days old, Choi Hyoung-woo became the oldest player in KBO League history to hit a grand slam. The record he broke had belonged to Felix Jose, who was 41 years, 3 months, and 29 days old when he hit his own age-record grand slam back in August 2006. That record had stood, untouched, for approximately twenty years — an entire generation of KBO hitters had come and gone without a player old enough, and productive enough, to challenge it.
A rookie pitcher on the mound. A 42-year-old cleanup hitter at the plate. One swing erased a record that had survived twenty years of KBO baseball.
Beyond the age record itself, the home run carried additional significance for Choi’s 2026 season and career resume. It was his 16th home run of the 2026 KBO season, confirming that the 42-year-old is still producing meaningful power numbers deep into his career rather than simply hanging on for playing time. And on the career-long ledger, it was the 10th grand slam of his career — a number that places him among a select group of KBO hitters who have found the bases-loaded home run repeatedly across a long career, rather than as a once-in-a-career fluke.
Who Is Choi Hyoung-woo?
Choi Hyoung-woo is a veteran slugger for the Samsung Lions, one of the most storied and successful franchises in KBO League history. Over the course of a long professional career, he has established himself as one of the most consistently dangerous hitters the league has produced, the kind of player whose name has appeared near the top of offensive leaderboards year after year, across multiple different eras of the league. Reaching age 42 while still holding down a cleanup spot in a professional lineup is itself an accomplishment — very few players in any professional baseball league remain productive everyday hitters that deep into their careers, let alone hitters capable of delivering a bases-clearing home run against a live professional pitcher.
What makes this particular achievement resonate even further is that it did not happen in a vacuum. Choi has spent the 2026 season adding to a career already defined by rare, franchise- and league-level milestones. Just over a week before this grand slam, on August 18, 2026, Choi became the first player in KBO League history to reach 2,700 career hits — a separate, standalone all-time record that itself made national headlines. That earlier milestone was a testament to longevity and sustained hitting volume across an entire career. This new grand slam record adds a different dimension to the same story: not just that Choi has hit for a long time, but that at an age when most players have long since retired, he is still delivering the kind of high-leverage, high-impact hits that define a season.
A 20-Year-Old Record Falls
To understand why this record mattered so much to KBO League historians and fans, it helps to understand just how long the previous mark had gone unchallenged. Felix Jose set the oldest-grand-slam record in August 2006, at 41 years, 3 months, and 29 days old. For roughly two full decades afterward, no player in the KBO League — across thousands of games, thousands of at-bats with the bases loaded, and generations of new talent entering the league — managed to both reach that age and still be a good enough hitter to drive a grand slam.
Twenty years is a long time in any professional sport. Rosters turn over completely. Rules and eras of hitting shift. Entire generations of star players debut, peak, and retire. That the record survived that long is itself a marker of how difficult the combination of “old enough” and “still producing at an elite level” really is. A grand slam requires more than just being on the field — it requires being trusted by a manager to hit in a run-producing spot in the lineup (Choi was batting cleanup, the traditional power spot), staying healthy enough to be in the lineup at all, and retaining enough bat speed and power to drive a pitch out of the park with the game on the line and the bases full.
Choi Hyoung-woo didn’t just marginally beat Felix Jose’s mark — he broke it by more than a year and a half of age (42 years, 8 months, 10 days versus 41 years, 3 months, 29 days), a substantial gap in a record that measures age down to the month and day. In a league where the previous record had proven durable enough to survive twenty years of competition, extending it by well over a year is a significant statement about how much longer Choi has managed to sustain elite, high-leverage production compared to the player who held the mark before him.
The Matchup: Veteran Power Against Rookie Pitching
Part of what gives this moment its narrative punch is the matchup itself. Park Jun-hyun, the Kiwoom Heroes pitcher on the mound when the record-breaking slam happened, is a rookie — a player at the very beginning of the same professional journey Choi Hyoung-woo began decades earlier. In a very literal sense, the at-bat put two opposite ends of a baseball career on display in the same moment: a young pitcher still working to establish himself in the league, facing a hitter old enough, in some cases, to have been playing professional baseball before that pitcher was born.
That contrast is part of why “veteran defies age” stories land so powerfully with baseball fans everywhere, not just in South Korea. It’s not simply that an older player got a hit — it’s that the sport’s basic physics didn’t care how many years Choi Hyoung-woo had played. He turned on a pitch, in the first inning, with the bases loaded, against professional-caliber pitching, and hit it out. The scoreboard and the record book don’t discount a hit because the hitter is 42. In this case, quite the opposite: the fact that he was 42 was exactly what made the moment historic.
Why Grand Slams Carry Extra Weight in Baseball
American fans need no introduction to why a grand slam is baseball’s most dramatic single offensive play. It is the only home run that can score four runs on one swing, and it can only happen when the bases are already loaded — meaning the moment carries built-in tension before the pitch is even thrown. A grand slam instantly shifts a game’s scoreboard and its momentum in a way no other single play in baseball can match, short of an actual walk-off situation.
Because of that outsized impact, grand slams tend to be remembered and cataloged more carefully than ordinary home runs, in KBO record-keeping as much as in MLB’s. Records like “most career grand slams” or, in this case, “oldest player to hit a grand slam,” exist precisely because the play itself is rare and consequential enough to be worth tracking as its own separate category, distinct from the broader home run record book. Choi’s 10th career grand slam places him among the more prolific bases-clearing hitters in KBO history — a number that reflects not a single fluke moment but a recurring pattern across a long, productive career of coming through in the sport’s highest-pressure hitting situation.
A Season for the Ages
This grand slam is only the latest entry in what has already become a remarkable 2026 season for Choi Hyoung-woo. The home run was his 16th of the season — a total that shows he remains an active power threat in the Samsung Lions lineup, not merely a player being kept around for sentimental or leadership value. Combined with his career-hits record set earlier in the same month, the 2026 season is shaping up as one of the defining stretches of Choi’s entire career, even though it comes at an age when most players have long since retired from the sport altogether.
It is worth pausing on the rarity of what Choi is doing in 2026 alone. In the span of just over a week, he authored two separate all-time or record-setting achievements: becoming the first player in KBO League history to reach 2,700 career hits on August 18, and then becoming the oldest player in KBO League history to hit a grand slam on August 26. Two distinct records, set roughly a week apart, by the same 42-year-old hitter, is the kind of stretch that gets referenced for years afterward whenever fans and analysts discuss the greatest late-career seasons in KBO League history.
Quick Facts
- Player: Choi Hyoung-woo, Samsung Lions
- Milestone: Oldest player in KBO League history to hit a grand slam
- Age at record: 42 years, 8 months, 10 days
- Previous record holder: Felix Jose, 41 years, 3 months, 29 days (set August 2006)
- Record stood for: Approximately 20 years
- Date: August 26, 2026
- Opponent: Kiwoom Heroes
- Location: Gocheok Sky Dome, Seoul, South Korea
- Inning: 1st inning, batting cleanup
- Pitcher: Park Jun-hyun (rookie)
- Season home run count: 16th home run of the 2026 season
- Career grand slam count: 10th grand slam of his career
Frequently Asked Questions
What record did Choi Hyoung-woo break on August 26, 2026?
Choi Hyoung-woo, a veteran slugger for the Samsung Lions, hit a grand slam against the Kiwoom Heroes at Gocheok Sky Dome, becoming the oldest player in KBO League history to hit a grand slam. He was 42 years, 8 months, and 10 days old at the time, breaking the previous record of 41 years, 3 months, and 29 days, held by Felix Jose since August 2006.
Who pitched the grand slam Choi Hyoung-woo hit?
The pitch came from Kiwoom Heroes rookie pitcher Park Jun-hyun in the top of the first inning. Choi, batting cleanup for the Samsung Lions, hit the grand slam off Park in that first-inning at-bat.
How does this compare to Choi Hyoung-woo’s earlier 2026 milestone?
This grand slam record is separate from Choi’s earlier 2026 milestone. On August 18, 2026, Choi became the first player in KBO League history to reach 2,700 career hits, also becoming the league’s all-time leader in career total bases on the same swing. The oldest-grand-slam record covered here is a distinct achievement, set about a week later, on August 26, 2026.
Why do “oldest player” records matter in baseball?
Baseball fans, including longtime MLB followers, place special value on records tied to age because they measure something beyond raw talent: sustained health, adaptability, and the ability to keep performing against pitchers many years younger. An “oldest player to do X” record specifically celebrates a player defying the sport’s usual aging curve, which is why moments like Choi Hyoung-woo’s grand slam resonate with fans regardless of which league they follow.
How many career grand slams does Choi Hyoung-woo have?
The August 26, 2026 grand slam was the 10th of Choi Hyoung-woo’s career, and his 16th home run of the 2026 season overall.
Looking Ahead
Records like the one Choi Hyoung-woo now holds are, by their nature, difficult to approach quickly. It took twenty years for anyone to challenge Felix Jose’s mark, and Choi didn’t just tie it — he pushed the bar meaningfully further out, adding well over a year onto the previous benchmark. For the next challenger to come along, in the KBO League or in any comparable league around the world, matching a 42-year-old cleanup hitter’s bases-loaded power will require an unusual combination of health, opportunity, and enduring bat speed that very few players ever sustain that deep into a career.
For now, Choi Hyoung-woo’s 2026 season stands as one of the more remarkable late-career stretches in recent KBO League memory — a career-record hit total set in mid-August, followed just over a week later by a new age record for the league’s most dramatic single offensive play. Whatever comes next for the Samsung Lions veteran, this stretch of the season has already secured its place in the record books twice over, and given fans on both sides of the Pacific a reminder that in baseball, age really is just a number until someone proves otherwise.
Source: MoneyToday, JoongAng Economy News, Segye Ilbo