Sunday May 27, 2012

South Korea wins gold in baseball

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  • 0

    okapake

    Bye bye Japan Hoshino! Time to retire!

  • 0

    chibaman

    Not Korea! Anybody but Korea please! We Japanese are better than them! I have my 2006 classic flag to prove it!

  • 0

    some14some

    Historic win for Korea, joining the club of Gold Medalists in Baseball Olympics i.e USA and Cuba ! Congratulations ! Finally it proves that bold actions not big mouths help achieve wonderful results.

  • 0

    chibaman

    All hail Korea, OLYMPIC AND THUS WORLD CHAMPIONS FOR AT LEAST EIGHT YEARS. Eight years?! Ouch Japan. And shame on you, disappointment of Asia. Please look to your superior Korean counterparts and get some tutelage on how to play the game properly. Also I think there were a few billion typos in the press when tough man turned national disgrace Hoshino said Japan is only interested in the gold medal. What he meant to say was Japan is not interested in any medals. Welcome home, WBC Champions! I still have my 2006 pennant flag! It's a bit dusty, but lest we forget.

  • 0

    smithinjapan

    Good job, Korea! A well deserved victory for the true world champions.

    "...in what will long be remembered as an upset in baseball’s last Olympic hurrah for at least eight years."

    Not here... In Japan it's already been forgotten.

  • 0

    stanoue

    Well done Korea, well played tournament.

  • 0

    webby

    The way I see it, any one team among the four teams (Cuba, USA, Japan and Korea) can now win either WBC or Olympics. It should also be noted that Japan did not play all that well in the WBC tournament and got beaten by Korea 2 out of 3, until Japan barely and luckily got into the elimination round (after losing two games to Korea -- remember when Ichiro was drinking because he thought Japan was out of the competition?) when USA surprisingly lost to Mexico. Out of their last 5 meetings, Japan lost 4 times of 5 to Korea. Now, does this mean Korea baseball team is the best in the world? Of course not. If all MLB players had participated, the USA would probably field the strongest team, followed by Japan. However, you have to keep in mind that the baseball infrastructure in Korea is very, very poor compared to USA or Japan. There are very few high school baseball teams and baseball fields. The same thing goes for swimming. The average Korean professional baseball player probably gets paid less than $100,000 USD per year, while the Japanese/USA counterparts get paid probably 5 to 10 times more on the average. Given this fact, Korea has to bring their best players to WBC or Olympics competition, just to compete. Anyway, that's what makes the Olympics interesting to watch, because sometimes the sheer collective desire of the team to win can lead to great results. Anyway, one thing is clear -- Korea has improved fast. And in baseball, a good team chemistry is more important than having superior individual players. Even Taiwan and China are coming up very fast. One thing I noticed is that Korean players have gotten better hitting the Japanese pitchers, but I agree that Hoshino made some key mistakes in managerial decisions. I would not have allowed Iwase to pitch that long. Korea always had decent pitchers and defense, but they did not have good hitters. Now, their hitting has improved.

  • 0

    FrEcKlEfAcE

    Congratulations to Korea, Cuba and the USA in this Iast Olympic baseball game.

    I got a good laugh last night listening to the excuses the Japanese used for losing 5 baseball games to supposedly inferior competition. The Olympic strikezone was mentioned, as was G.G. Sato(man, he sucks bad!). But the best excuse has to bethat Japanese baseball(yakyuu) is different from Olympic baseball.har

  • 0

    hoserfella

    Fantastic performance by WORLD CHAMPION KOREA!! Kimchi power!!

  • 0

    chardk1

    We can argue about who is the "true" world champion under we're blue in the face but right now the Korean team has a lot to be proud of and the Japanese team not so much. Any time you field the best team on paper and finish out of the money, that is disappointing, and to the credit of the Japanese team and the TV commentators, they have been mostly honest about the fact that Japan just didn't get it done and the Koreans drank their milkshakes. Congratulations Korea!

  • 0

    ProudKoreanGuy

    Fantastic performance by WORLD CHAMPION KOREA!! Kimchi power!!

    Well, I wouldn't go so far as to call the Korean team "world champions", but Olympic champions which they were.

  • 0

    ProudKoreanGuy

    That is, which they ARE, until the next time - IF there is ever one again in the Olympics.

  • 0

    lazyman0909

    Congratulations Korea! That was a great game! Bases loades one out and he hits into a double play. Wow What a game!

  • 0

    rajakumar

    Well done South korea team olympic, congrats for 13 top gold positions.

  • 0

    chibaman

    Bases loades one out and he hits into a double play. Wow What a game!

    Yep bit of luck there in the end that got 'em over the line. Really could have gone either way. Lot of work put in by both teams getting to that point. Good that it came down to the 9th inning too.

  • 0

    imgold

    Freckleface, well said. I too got a big laugh out of the indepth analysis of the "sekai takai sutriki zonu" ! what a bunch of sour grapes that whole story turned out to be. Funny, the Koreans, especially the Yom. Giants Lee, didn't seem to have any problem with the strike zone ! I was about to wet my pants over the whole story so I decided to change channels, only to find a half-assed news program going on and on about "what poor sports" the chinese fans were. How they were booing anything the Japanese did. The story then went on to say that chinese fans attempted to distract Japanese athletes as they prepared for their events or turn to compete. I always knew that Japanese athletes were poor sports but now I know where they get. The nations collective mind set remains nothing short of "us versus them". I was shocked to listen to Hoshino's post game comments about the loss to the Americans. Not one positive comment about the team that just beat them. And one of the Japanese players actually made a very disparaging remark by saying, "how could we lose to a bunch of non-professionals" ? Japan needs lessons in sportsmenship, no doubt about it.

  • 0

    FrEcKlEfAcE

    Yep, I also saw that program. Pathetic really. A whole lot of face was lost in not getting a medal, but to get sent home by "low level" players must really burn. Especially considering Japan never won gold.

  • 0

    chibaman

    I wonder how small the media contingent was at Narita today. Slightly different from what it would have been if they won anything, not to mention that ever elusive gold.

  • 0

    cesun

    Congrats to South Korea, could have gone either way in the end, but a great game!

  • 0

    TheCode

    To imgold:

    I was shocked to listen to Hoshino's post game comments about the loss to the Americans. Not one positive comment about the team that just beat them.

    Actually, Hoshino said, "I'm disappointed that we couldn't win a medal, but we just ran into some very good teams. The Americans, Koreans, and Cubans all had very well-trained teams, and playing against them humbled us." Seems to me that this remark of his does indeed say something good about the competition he faced.

  • 0

    LSteven

    TheCode,

    I also saw Hoshino say that. I didn't like him at the beginning of this tournament, since he seemed so confident; even overconfident of them winning a medal, but in the end, he was definitely humbled by this experience and now realizes the quality of players there are across the world. He even mentioned how impressed he was with other teams like Taipei and China. I hope that Japan remembers this experience in eight years, if baseball is reinstated as an Olympic sport.

    In any case, good job to all teams. Congratulations South Korea, Cuba, and the U.S. for winning medals! But also good job to all the other teams playing in this tournament as it was the last we will see of baseball for awhile.

  • 0

    imgold

    thecode, lsteven,

    I know what I saw and heard. Got anything in print ?

  • 0

    Blue_Tiger

    Well-done, Korea, Cuba, and USA. Once again, Japan has hyped themselves out of a gold medal.

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