Thunder Sticks Final

On home soil, USA ousted by Japan

I have to give it up to team Japan. They were able to overcome such obstacles as palms-out-victory-sign-throwing fans and being tens of thousands of kilometers away from their home country (according to Fidel Castro, this would allow managers to make foolish decisions; although Davey Johnson had no problem doing so on his homeland) to earned themselves a date to a orange vs blue thunder stick final.

Despite the beat down they had administered to my team and their stubborn adherence to the metric system, I will be rooting for them to beat the Koreans.

I choose to focus on the beauty and the positives of their culture over my baseball allegiance.

I need to find out where this buffet is

Damn metric system

These guys were pretty awesome back in the day. I had two of their albums.

Update 1: Japan had a 3-2 lead in the bottom of the ninth. Darvish walked 2 in his second relief appearance in two days. After striking out the next two batters, he allowed a game tying single to Bum Ho Lee (ha ha, bum ho). Blown save. We're going to extras. The box score reads Japan with a 12-5 hits advantage, yet the score is tied at 3.

Update 2: Top 10, 2 outs. Runners at the corners, Ichiro at the plate. Runner moved to second, defensive indifference. Holy crap, Ichiro just hit a 2 run double in a 9 pitch battle - he was batting under .100 in the tournament up to tonight. In the championship game, Ichiro goes 4 for 5, with probably the biggest hit in the tournament. Mr. March, Ichiro Suzuki.


Update 3: Darvish just walked the lead off batter again. 2 innings, 2 lead off walks. Okay, Darvish strikes out the next guy. Pop fly, 2 outs! Come on Darvish, I need to go to sleep!

Update 4: Game over! Darvish strikes out Jeong. Team Japan dog piles Ichiro. WBC II championship goes to Japan.

Oh no. Palms in! Palms in!!

This is the sort of muted celebration I expected.

Fidel Castro Accuses Team Korea of Pulling a Belichick

Our second favorite Cuban (right behind Ricky Ricardo of course) wrote a nice little essay titled "The Moral Importance of the Baseball Classic".

This essay was written the day before the Cuban national team was eliminated by team Japan, which ended up beating Cuba twice in 3 days. Wait, not just beating - shut them out for 18 innings.

In the essay, the aging dictator rants about the exploitation of athletes by capitalist countries like the United States, and praised the hard work and contributions by the Cubans; he made a point in singling out how the evil American corporations like Major League Baseball have stacked the deck against his Cubans and the Venezuelans.

In essence, the entire essay is just filled with how the forces of evil (the United States) and it's willing allies (Koreans and the Japanese) have ganged up to prevent the people from freely participating in sports and achieve the ultimate goal of athletics, which is health and education.

I know this senile old man is stuck in the 1950's with this rant, but this little gem caught my eye:

"..Korea has invested huge resources in facilities and technologies. On the eve of the last Olympics, when we were forced to adapt to the conditions of a totally different time zone, they treated us splendidly and offered to us, at no cost, their facilities, but at the same time they exhaustively studied every one of our athletes, and took pictures and films of them.

They know every pitching from our pitchers and the reaction by every one of our batters to every pitching. They are the main adversary, because they are also methodical and they bat harder than the Japanese. "

Nice huh? The Koreans were kind enough to let your team use their facilities and you turn around and accused them of cheating. It's pretty clear that Comrade Fidel was hoping that his team would face Japan in the elimination game. Well, he got his wish and didn't work out too well for him. Perhaps soon, he would write an essay accusing the Americans of creating an error-inducing fog that caused the 2 run error by his outfielder Cepeda Frederich.

You think George Steinbrenner and Daniel Snyder are annoying as team owners? They have nothing on this guy.

We'll have to wait another four years now for another chance for Fidel to make excuses for his team's next early exit.

Now a proper sendoff to our brothers in arms in the great struggle of class-conscious proletarians, I give you the English Patient episode of Seinfeld.

America! F*@K YEAH!

Team USA walks off with Puerto Rico's bid to the WBC Final Four.

Adios Team Menudo.

Down by two runs at the bottom of the ninth inning, The United States no longer saddled by Pedroia's non hitting, came storming back against the Phillies J.C. Romero.

Two singles and two walks set up David Wright's heroic walk off 2 run single.

Satisfying? Hell yeah, this victory avenged the earlier Jake Peavy mercy rule disasterous loss to this same Puerto Rican team, who were picked to reach the finals after a relatively easy trip thus far in the WBC. Also, I am quite happy to see the person who blew the save was Fernando Cabrera, Red Sox reliever who'll be spending many summers in Pawtucket.

Go ahead, caption this picture - you know you want to.

Japan vs. Korea III? Not quite the nail-biter that was Japan vs. Korea II at the Tokyo Dome. The game was basically over when the hybrid Axis of Evil I & II Yu Darvish let the first three batters reach and score in the first inning.

This was good because I don't have to stay up until 3 to watch the entire game. The bad? Yu Darvish is a good young pitcher. He settled down nicely after the disastrous first, and pitched well for 3 innings. Until Japan solves Korean starter Jung Keun Bong - they're not going to win the WBC.

This is worth a mention. Team Korea definately has the most 3rd grade giggle inducing names in the World Baseball Classic - Jung Keun Bong and Bum Ho Lee. Long Duk Dong just missed the roster cut due to tendenitious in his elbow.

MLB 09 the Show Commercial Proves True

Normally I would be pretty giddy over Dustin's 3 game, .125 batting average, but not when he's playing on Captain America's team. Christ, I don't think they were all high inside pitches either.

OVER-RATED!

Dutch Boys Knock Out Team Short Stops

" There are only two things I can't stand in this world. People who are intolerant of other people's cultures... and the Dutch."

- Nigel Powers

The Dominican Republic was upset for the second time in one week by the Dutch squad.

The early exit came in the most unexpected fashion. The Dominican Republic, with three Major League short stops on its roster (apparently they needed one more) , lost the game in 11 innings on an infield error by Willy Aybar (the defensive replacement for David Ortiz).

The 11th inning started with the Jose Reyes scoring the game's first run to take a 1-0 lead. Netherlands comes right back and ties the game 1-1. With a runner at first base, two costly errors by the Dominican Republic infielders who aren't short stops, allow the runner to advance to third and score the winning run.

Alright, I may be a little bit unfair in that last paragraph. One of the errors was the pitcher (well, he's technically also an infielder) throwing the ball away on a pick off, and Hanley Remirez was the DH, and hence not on the field. Robinson Cano was playing second base.

Still, this has to be a painful exit. Favored to take it all and not even getting out of the first round. I attribute this to the baseball gods punishing them for lying about their age.

Big Q, I want the truth. You had money on the D.R. winning this game, didn't you.

Canada Gets Bounced From WBC

Two days after North America's team signed Terrell Owens, Canada gets bounced from the World Baseball Classic. This was somewhat of a surprise, as the Canadians looked pretty good against the Americans, and they were expected to get past Italy and possibly challenge / knock off Venezuela.

Sunday and Monday has not been kind to the host nations. First, the favored Mexican team was upset by Australia; not enough just to lose in front of the home crowd - they were embarrassed in a game called after 8 innings by mercy rule. 8 Mexican pitchers combined to give up a WBC record 22 hits and 17 runs. I think they might even have brought in a couple of ball boys to toss a couple of innings. Mexico is really in bad shape here, they are forced to play an elimination game against South Africa with a depleted bullpen.

Sixth inning call to the bullpen."Yeah, I'm almost ready."

Monday morning started off with me waking up to see Japan losing the top spot in Pool A to Korea in a pitchers' dual. This game was what I was expecting out of Asia's top two squads, but I am somewhat confused about the scheduling of this game. I had thought the format of pool play in this tournament was double elimination, and in double elimination formats - the team advancing from the losers' bracket must beat the winners' bracket team twice to take the top spot. Maybe I am just being selfish, hoping DiceK blows out his arm before the MLB season.

Monday evening saw Don Cherry and his awesome outfit throw out the first pitch at the Sky Dome in Toronto, then saw the no name Italians make spaghetti O's out of our neighbors to the north.

I know I am going to disappoint some of you people, I do not have any new updates on the state of Taiwanese baseball. As far as I know, no one has been machine gunned while standing outside making a phone call. Yet.

However, I did do a quick search on the Chinese American short stop Raymond Chang. This Fort Wayne Baseball site has a nice article about him. I'll be cheering for this kid to make it to the bigs.

Update: Mexico has pulled ahead of South Africa 6-2, in the top of the seventh. El Tri proceeded to give back one run in the bottom of the frame. Mexico has used 3 pitchers thus far (the starter did his part, pitched 6 strong innings giving up only 2 runs), they are praying that their bullpen can hold up. Or maybe they're pulling a Team Korea strategy, tanking early and winning the last game for the pool.

Okay USA!

Team USA clinches an automatic bid to the second round of the World Baseball Classic tonight by trouncing Venezuela 15-6.

This is something you don't see everyday

The U.S. team overcame a 3-2 deficit and a 1 for 6 performance by the American League reigning MVP Dustin Pedroia by putting the game out of reach with an 8 run sixth inning.

I am happy with this result for a couple of reasons. One, it's team USA. Two, the win comes at the expense of Venezuela. Yes, I will concede that they have the hottest women on the planet, but they also have that nut job Hugo Chavez, who along with Massachusetts' Joe Kennedy, are probably the two finalists in the regionals of the anti-American Kumite.

Both Adam Dunn and Kevin Youkilis homered for the Americans second game in a row, and Chris Iannetta along with DeRosa contributed with key RBI hits, blew open a close 3-2 contest.

Much of the credit should go to the American bats, but after the Venezuelan starter Armando Galarraga was chased after four innings, the Venezuelan bullpen didn't have an answer for the American firepower.

The fallout continues in Taiwan over their quick exit from the WBC.

A little personal note here, the senior commentator Fu Da-jen quoted in the article above, was the MC at our wedding in Taiwan. Now I think back, that was pretty cool. I wish I knew ahead of time that he is famous in Taiwan for broadcasting NBA games, hell, I would of had him pimp our entrance into the wedding reception. Maybe some sort of Jabbawockeez intro a la the All Star game or maybe, or something simpler like "At point guard, 5'-6" from Nooooooortheastern.."; or even better - I could have thrown talcum powder into the air instead of toasting people.

Damn, the Marv Albert of Taiwan was the MC at my wedding, and I failed to capitalize on it. I suck.

There is NO CRYING IN BASEBALL!

Team Boli Stunned by Netherlands

Team Netherlands upset the heavily favored Dominican Republic 3-2.

Ouch. This has to be the biggest upset thus far in the short history of the WBC. Winning pitcher for the Netherlands? Fat Sid.

The other surprise in WBC action today is Japan's rout of South Korea. Team Japan winning was not that much of a surprise, but the final score was. The game ended in seven innings, due to the newly instituted mercy rule (15 runs after 5 and 10 runs after 7).

Pundits in Japan was questioning the strength of the Japanese team, as they only beat the fourth seeded team China by a score of 4-0. Coming into this tournament, fresh off of their gold medal in the Beijing Olympics, team Korea was actually the favorite.

Mercy rule loss. I think I owe Chinese Taipei an apology, they're not the most gutless team in this tournament. Oh wait, they lost to China last night. Never mind.

Speaking of Chinese Crap-Pei, their fans are not taking the failure at the WBC very well. A couple of the baseball web bulletin boards had to shut down today, due to the threats of violence and use profanity towards the national team. Words like "embarrassment" and "national shame" were being tossed around, and those were the ones they can print in the newspapers. People have called for the ouster of the president as well as the management of the national baseball team.

That sounds about right. Let's see, the mainlanders started playing baseball, what, 6 years ago? and Taiwan is the only team they have beaten (twice in a row now) in international competition.

Chinese Taipei's stay in the World Baseball Classic was 21 hours. Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on if they were planning on using it as an excuse) they didn't have to travel across time zones; hell, they probably didn't even need a hotel - they could have just kept their luggage in one of those airport lockers.

In the latest news from Taiwan, there are several legislators calling for new special tax incentives for corporate sponsored baseball teams. Wow, I guess they really care about their baseball.

This chick looks pissed.

I am placing the blame for the losses completely on this chick with the overused palms out victory sign

Chinese Crap-Pei Routed by South Korea

Final score: South Korea 9, Chinese Taipei 0.

This follows China being blanked by defending WBC Champion Japan 4-0 on Thursday morning.

With 1/5th of the World's population, they can't find one guy to score in the World Baseball Classic.

The two Chinese sides are currently playing an elimination game, where the winner gets the right to be spanked by South Korea or Japan again.

My Korean American friend, whom I shall only identify as "BALCO", was pretty giddy over these events.

I have one answer for you Balco, wait until the World Ping-pong classic, we'll see who's ass is getting beat.

Update: The People's baseball team used a combination of strong people's pitching and timely people's hitting, triumphed over the capitalist pigs of Taiwan, 4-1.

The shortstop for team China, Raymond Chang, is an American. Born in Kansas and is currently in the Pittsburgh Pirates farm system.

Despite his questionable practice of looking like Julian Tavarez in his WBC profile picture, had himself a big day at the plate - 3 for 4 and 2 RBI's.

I am taking comfort in the fact that Team China has two farmhands from the Yankees, and Taipei has two from the Red Sox. So this is in effect win number one for the Yankees.

I will leave you all with the immortal words of Tom Tuttle from Tacoma, Washington.