Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Pool A rematch! Korea/Japan, the return of The Rivalry. This will be an 11pm start, to keep us suffering on the opposite end of the gametime spectrum, and it will be on MLBN. Alas.
postscript: things we learned from this game:
--giant Korean drum, awesome but not available in the WBC store, like all good things
--other Things We Badly Want That the WBC Store Does Not Carry Because They Do Not Actually Want Our Money: four-color WBC pens, WBC logo baseball gloves, those sweet matte team Japan batting helmets, stuffed toy versions of Snuppy the cloned Korean Afghan hound
--Yong-Kyu Lee= Korean Ozzie Guillen
--Yu Darvish will never play in MLB, unless he goes back on his Solemnly Sworn Word
--the 61 mph pitch thrown by Shunsuke Watanabe shall henceforth be known as the suhpee pitch, opposite of the eephus
--inexplicable plastic bag hats
Many thanks to Tony, Snuppy the Hound, ivantopumpyouup, and briefly Jennifer and stillawakward for enjoying this Battle of the Thunderstix in glorious liveblog action.
Japan has been humiliated by Korea again, how will it all end?? Tragically, somehow, I expect.Labels: Japan, Korea, liveblog, World Baseball Classic
3:55 PM
Monday, March 09, 2009
The last Tokyo Dome game of the 2009 World Baseball Classic. On the one hand, yay: no more Sickeningly-Early-o'clock start times! On the other hand: the last game of this WBC that Orestes Destrade will broadcast.
:(
postscript: things we learned from this game:
--Hisashi Iwakuma= Japanese Mike Mussina
--Jung Keun Bong, the Korean starting pitcher, is an Ichiro fanboy and needed a moment every time Ichiro came to the plate
--rocket of arms
--Orestes Destrade makes the worst Stu Scott/boo-ya joke in the history of the world
--Yu Darvish, sexy in both the pitching sense and the literal, posed naked for a magazine sense
Many thanks to ivantopumpyouup and stillawkward, who joined me for this last and best bit of pre-breakfast baseball and frantic Google Images searches for the naked photos of Yu Darvish.
We will miss you, Tokyo Dome! ORESTES DESTRADE AND SUPER "DRY" FOREVER!!
 Labels: Japan, Korea, liveblog, World Baseball Classic
12:39 AM
Sunday, March 08, 2009
Sunday morning, feel the excitement.
Ah, nothing quite like a little elimination baseball to add some zest to your hideously early Sunday morning. China and Korea face off here, and the loser will be heading back home. Red vs. Blue! Great Wall vs. Thunderstix! Team that was defeated by Japan vs. Team that was defeated by Japan! WORLD BASEBALL CLASSIC!
postscript: things we learned from this game:
--DID YOU KNOW THE GREAT WALL, CHINA, FROM SPACE
--only announcers may acquire the glorious four-color WBC pen
--Suk-Min Yoon is good at pitching baseballs
--bento boxes
--Sun Lingfeng= Chinese Ichiro
--Dae Ho Lee= Korean Adam Dunn
--I want that fucking pen
Thanks again to ivantopumpyouup, who likes keeping me company and loves baseball and hates sleep.
THE CAMPAIGN TO HAVE ORESTES DESTRADE ANNOUNCE EVERY SINGLE GAME IN THE REST OF THE WORLD BASEBALL CLASSIC BEGINS NOW!Labels: China, Korea, liveblog, World Baseball Classic
12:11 AM
Friday, March 06, 2009
Three 4 am wakeups in a row, for no reason at all-- except for WORLD BASEBALL CLASSIC GLORY! Am I crazy or am I.... no, I'm crazy. Here we go for the winner's bracket of the second round of Pool A play. The enormous Japan/Korea rivalry! The Tokyo Dome!
Thunderstix! SUPER "DRY"!
postscript: things we learned from this game:
--Daisuke Matsuzaka pitches like he's having sex with the game of baseball
--when they implement the mercy rule, everyone wins, except for Korean national pride
--Norichika Aoki has the best name for Tokyo Dome chants
--gyroball
--if you're fat you're a power hitter, if you're skinny but still hit homeruns you're a 'nonpower power hitter'
--baseball statistic abbreviations, for grate lulz
--grackles
Many thanks to ivantopumpyouup, famous cloned Afghan Snuppy the Hound, and Tom Clifton for contributing to this exercise in waking up early to lovingly stroke the dewy flank of international baseball. Sorry your boys lost, ivan, but, um.... yeah, no, sorry, there were no positives to that performance.Labels: Japan, Korea, liveblog, World Baseball Classic
10:29 PM
Thursday, March 05, 2009
Oh no not another one! I am just doing these for my own purposes-- if you want to follow along or join in, you are more than welcome to do so, but I'll be livebloggin' away even if it's just me. This one will go live for Chinese Taipei (Taiwan)/Korea, Friday, 4:30 am.
postscript: things we learned from this game:
--Korea invented Thunderstix
--Korea cloned a dog and named it Snuppy
--Korea is Orestes Destrade's favorite Pool A team because they have fat players
--pitcher Jung Keun Bong is an Ichiro fanboy
--Chinese Taipei is terrible at baseballLabels: Korea, liveblog, Taiwan, World Baseball Classic
10:57 PM
Thursday, March 16, 2006
Holy freaking cats, Korea.
I'm going to be a mess tomorrow. I have to be up and vaguely mobile in about 3 and a half hours. I have 10 and a half hours of solid classtime tomorrow (today), not counting transit, which works out to about 2 more hours for the whole day. I just stayed awake to watch Korea/Japan, even though I already knew that Korea had won.
It was completely worth it.
At this point I am quite incapable of summing the game up properly but let me say this: it was 0-0 going into the 8th inning.
Chan Ho Park started and threw 5 innings of 4-hit, scoreless ball. Byung Hyun Kim got the win and the Fabulous Mr. Koo (name probably picked up from some Mets blog or other) got the hold.
Korea scored when a runner hustled from first to third on what should have been just a single. The ball beat him there. The third baseman had the ball. The Korean runner sort of slid into the Japanese third baseman, forcing the ball out of his glove (all very aboveboard and and clean and legal, by the by... no slapping), and making himself safe. The next batter was the Korean captain, Jong Beom Lee, who proceeded to hit a two-run double.
Japan got one run back on a single-shot homer in the bottom of the 9th, but the ridiculously good Korean pitching held on for the win.
The crowd was overwhelmingly pro-Korean. There were signs everywhere: "Final Four-Korea-March Madness", "30 years? We only needed 1 week!" (a reference to Ichiro's comments on Japan's dominance of Asian baseball), "Korea hit homer!" with a big drawing of Homer Simpson.
When Korea got that last out. Oh man.
They got their flag, and ran around the field with it like in the Olympics. One of their players took another Korean flag, on a pole, and dug a little hole in the center of the pitcher's mound, and planted the Korean flag in front of the rubber at Angel Stadium. He took his time, concentrating on getting it straight and standing tall, digging a little deeper when it threatened to fall over, excited and happy and intent on his task, like it was the most important thing in the world at that moment. When he got it standing to his satisfaction he stepped back to rejoin his teammates in the celebration.
Then he picked up the hem of the flag and kissed it.
Japan can still get into the next round, if the US loses to Mexico tomorrow. And I'll feel bad if they don't make it in, after what happened to them in their game against us.
But for Korea to beat Japan not once, but twice, and once in the Tokyo Dome... for any team to win the Asian bracket besides Japan... for Byung Hyun Kim to have a more positive impact on a baseball game than Ichiro Suzuki... it's huge. It's immense. It's a bigger upset than Canada beating the US, which I said at the time (Korea had already beaten Japan at home at that point).
Quoth the captain: "It made me proud to be Korean, but more important, we beat Japan," he [Jong Beom Lee] offered. "It was sweet revenge."
Oh yeah, and Korea is undefeated in WBC play.
Oh, and the Korean government has announced that, since they made it to the semifinals, those members of the Korean team who have yet to serve their mandatory military service will have that three-year requirement waived.
I don't care what George Steinbrenner or David Wells think. Bud Selig got something right with this thing. If you don't love this, you don't love baseball.Labels: baseball, Japan, Korea, World Baseball Classic
6:06 AM
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