Japan beats San Francisco Giants in exhibition

not so tough without the steroids, are they

In other news: Toss Not Given.

They play exhibition games in the middle of the World Baseball Classic?

Wonder how much Samurai Japan paid the Giaints to take a dive.

xpompey8 - Was thinking the exact same thing. Maybe Japan thought they needed it after being beaten by RoK.

Why is Hara trotting out his benchwarmers when he never uses them in a real game?

Paying to take a dive in an exhibition game? Coaches use exhibition games to evaluate individual players. The see what their rookies and bench players are capable of doing against experienced players from another team. Whether or not their injured players are limping and etc. I'd pay extra to see the Texas Rangers last past August.

"National League pitcher of the year Tim Lincecum threw 2 1-3 scoreless innings for the Giants before leaving after giving up two walks in the third. Lincecum gave up a single and three walks, striking out five in a 49-pitch outing.

Not bad for pre-season, against the best Japan has.

Samurai Nippon Ganbare!!!

Time to make the world series a TRUE world series by taking the winner from the Japanese leagues and having a best of seven series with the winner in the USA. I propose Hawaii as the venue. Should be a great event.

The NPB champ would have virtually no chance to win a best-of-seven series against the World Series champ.

MLB draws on a much deeper talent pool from around the world as compared to the insular Japanese approach to the game.

There will probably never be a true World Series in a format like the soccer World Cup because there is no legitimate business reason for MLB to alter its season once every 4 years to do so. Unless someone can conclusively demonstrate otherwise, it will be business as usual.

As far as the result of this game goes, it should come as no surprise to anyone that Japan's best in peak condition for the WBC could win a meaningless spring training game against the SF Giants.

I'm for a NPB vs MLB champions game. Have it here in Japan because of the market here. This would replace the NPB vs MlB allstar game they had here a few years ago which they stopped now. And it would replace the first few games of the season the MLB plays in Japan..

Nah, a true World Series would have the Japanese and Latin teams playing in the MLB, playing against all the other teams (not just against 7 or 11 other teams), in a long 150+ games season to comb just the top ~15% (about 1 in 7) teams, who'd then have to survive 3 or 4 tiers of playoffs. Whoever survives should be the one. ;-)

6-4 loss isn't that bad considering that they were playing against against a team of Japanese all stars who are probably peaking for the WBC tournament.

As for Soldave and TexasAggie-you guys can't be serious...