Just classic stuff here. In no way safe for work, but who feckin’ cares. Vintage footage of Earl Weaver losing it on an umpire, who quite frankly gets the better of him. Nice cameo appearance by Eddie Murray as well. (NSFW)

Earl: “What are you doing here now?”

Ump: “Why don’t you call the league office and ask them?”

Earl: “I will”

Ump: “Good”

Earl: “Don’t think I won’t”

Ump: “Good”

Earl: Wait for five ten years and …(unintelligible) …Hall of Fame

Ump: Oh, you’re gonna be in the hall of fame….why? for f**ckng up world series?”

As one commenter said, you could watch this all day and not get tired of it.  Hat tip to my friend Matt P. for the link.

I’d been meaning to post about this guy for a while — he’s a Korean “folk” musician that’s been around for a while. I think he’s well outside the mainstream, and the few Koreans I’ve asked about him hadn’t heard of him. But I came across his music on a download site a while ago and nabbed it because it was described as “acid folk.” I listened to it quite a bit last year on my iPod, deleted the original files, and then couldn’t listen to it once I bought a new iPod.

Then yesterday I came across this post on Ask a Korean!, which is about a musician that goes under the name of Lucid Fall. The song is in a similar vein as Kim Doo-soo… a little folky, but with a slightly jazzy edge that reminds me of one of my all time favorite singer/songwriters, Nick Drake (downloads in the comments).

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A Nexen Seoul Heroes player looks out into the snowfield that is Mokdong Stadium in a photo taken earlier today. It snowed like crazy over most of Korea last night, even where I live in Ulsan, which is just about the least likely place in Korea to see snow due to its low elevation and proximity to the ocean.

More photos here.

I’ll admit, the IOC just plain bothers me, and inevitably anything I read about it, I juxtapose it with its decision to remove baseball from the summer games. In fact, even during the recent winter games the removal of baseball crossed my mind a few times. Like when that Georgian died while he was riding that pie plate on top of knives. And then when Nickelback took the stage at the closing festival.

But this sure caught my eye today:

IOC says it aided N. Korean Olympic athletes US$115,000

Yeah, I know the Olympics are supposed to be in the spirit of competition, for the love of the game one might say. I’m sure the five North Korean athletes that were given (according to the story) $1,500 each month since 2008 worked hard and competed in good spirit.

Then again, think about how much of that money went straight to the North Korean government, or toward something like  a gold plated hand gun. And how much of it didn’t go to people starving in North Korea?

It’s still a drop in bucket compared to, say, the 400 million Hyundai handed North Korea in 2000, or what U.S. taxpayers likely ponied up for last year in getting Laura Ling and Euna Lee freed.

But it still stinks.

Haven’t heard of the show that’s promoting itself here, but I liked this so much I’ll make a special point to download an episode.

Love the first comment on the video too…

ItsNicolebaybie2011 koreans ARE fuckin crazy, though.

Found via One Free Korea.

Taiwanese baseball fans eager to catch a glimpse of some big league action are expressing dismay over the L.A. Dodgers roster sent to participate in this month’s upcoming exhibition match against the CPBL’s finest.

The roster includes Manny Ramirez and James Loney, but after that features only 17 players with big league experience.  Fans hoping to catch a glimpse of Kemp, Kershaw, Billingsley, or Kuroda will have to temper their expectations and settle for a small handful of big leaguers, farmhands, and a gang of non-roster invitees.  Some fans are demanding refunds for their tickets, and there’s even a facebook page that has popped up.

Apparently my earlier plea to the Dodgers on EWC fell on deaf ears.  (Hat tip to Aaron for the link).

Just found this while poking around on Naver. This would be from the “Pig Contest,” at Guanshan Village in Shantou City, found in China’s Guangdong province. More photos here.

Ground was broken today on a new baseball stadium in Pohang. This is somewhat exciting for me because I live just an hour away from the city. Although to be fair I’m about an hour from Busan and Daegu as well. But potential KBO expansion is exciting and since POSCO is to Pohang as Hyundai is to Ulsan, I’d say a new baseball team in Pohang sponsored by POSCO would make sense.

There was a rumor that POSCO would assume the reins of the Heroes, but then Nexen Tire stepped up and will now support the Nexen Seoul Heroes. The stadium above is set to open in 2011. That would be next season, but there hasn’t been any talk of KBO expansion…yet.

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Attended the Yanshui Fireworks Festival (Yan Shui Feng Pao) Festival in Tainan County last night.  Just another one of those boring cultural festivals.  Well, except for the part where giant trucks of fireworks and bottle rockets are ignited in the middle of entranced crowds in motorcycle helmets jumping up and down as if they’re in a mosh pit.  I shot the above video while ducking exploding fireworks going off around me.  (Watch it in HD, 720 or 1080p). Wikipedia takes care of the history of the event:

It is said that the Fireworks Festival originated from a cholera epidemic which broke out in the early ruling period of Kuanghsu Emperor of Ching Dynasty (around 1875) and lasted for more than twenty years.

In order to drive out the evil spirits and ward off the disease, the survivors invited the spirit of Kuan Kung (Kuan Ti), the Chinese god of war. Kuan Kung is worshipped as the God of War; since he was adept at managing finances, he is also worshipped as the patron saint of businessmen.

The deities of Heaven are able to inspect the land on the day of Lantern Festival by carrying the statue of Kuan Kung in palanquins and paraded around Yanshui and letting off masses of firecrackers, and the epidemic soon receded.

The most important of Yanshui’s prominent fireworks are the so-called “bee hives”, essentially multiple launchers of bottle rockets. These rocket forts are actually thousands of bottle rockets arranged row atop row in an iron-and-wooden framework. The setup looks like a beehive full of unleashed gunpowder. When the contraption is ignited, rockets shoot out rapidly in all directions. Dazzling explosives whiz and whirl across the sky and often into the crowd itself, both thrilling and intimidating the spectators.

Haven’t posted much about the Olympics after a blistering tirade against the opening ceremonies. I watched in passing, found myself slipping into my usual passive aggressive rooting for and against Korean athletes. It’s hard not to like Yu-na, but hard to stomach most the short track skaters. And with the Chilean earthquake as the backdrop, it was difficult to get too wound up about any of it. At least until I was subjected to Nickelback , Avril Lavigne, and dancing mounties during the closing ceremonies while eating sesame kalguksu at a local restaurant.

For me the most interesting aspect to these Winter Games will come July 11, when South Korea’s own Pyeongchang goes up against Munich and Annecy (France) for the rights to the 2018 games. I agree with this guy when he says Asia is the only place in the world where winter sports are growing. Hosting the games in Germany or France sounds passe to me. Japan hosted in 1998, the U.S.A. in 2002, and Italy in 2006. Even having the games in Canada again seemed a little ify after Calgary in 1988. France just had them in 1992.

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Folks, Jackson has been “mock drafting.” Note the present continuous form. We’re not talking one mock draft, probably not two, and quite possibly 10. His wife recently posted the above video, taken just this past Friday night at 11:51 p.m. According to her Jackson had the 8th pick in the Fantasy Prof Pro PhD Pandemonium Mock Draft #7a, and was sure Ryan Braun would fall to him. Evidently he did not. Jackson went ballistic and ended up with Chad Gaudin via autopick.

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LG catcher Joh In-sung and new Twins pitcher Edgar Gonzalez try to work out some differences in signs via a translator during their spring camp in Okinawa.

It’s been a couple years now since we started EWC and I get nearly daily emails from readers all over the world asking me: “What does Shinsano really look like?”.  Today, we lay that question to rest as the Marmot’s Hole brings us exclusive coverage of Aaron cheering on Coach Brian and his protege from his living room during Kim’s historic gold medal performance.

Not just Uee, but I think the fact that K-pop is once again turning to American football for the 2nd time in a few months is worth noting. Here’s Uee, introduced a couple posts ago, posing for Vogue Korea vamping it up in a few sporty outfits, two of which feature football getups.

This wouldn’t be notable except for the fact that American football isn’t the least bit popular in Korea. I gather there was an effort made by the NFL years ago. Koreans that came of age during the 80s and early 90s do seem to know something about the NFL, and there are some (dying) football clubs at a few universities here, but as popular as MLB and Manchester United styles are amongst young Koreans, you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone wearing a pink Green Bay Packers hat.

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Pink Tentacle has a post featuring Urban legends from Meiji-period Japan. My favorite is the belief that electric power lines were insulated with the blood of virgins.

Keep in mind, that during the Meji period (1868-1912) electricity was only starting to play a large role in the modernization of Japan, this following centuries of isolation. The other urban legends the post details are electric power lines juiced with Cholera, chocolate made from cow blood and phantom trains.

Pink Tentacle plans to make the Japanese urban legends a weekly series.

Ice Dancing. Ice. F–ing. Dancing.

(Note: The following ’sports’ included in the winter and summer olympics while baseball, aka world’s fourth most popular sport, is not: luge, snowboarding, an experimental variant of rugby known as sevens, synchronized swimming, BMX, canoe slalom, and beach volleyball.)

Been looking for a reason to post about Uee for a while. What’s Uee you say? Did I invent a new mashup of urine and pee? No, it’s 유이 (Uee) from the K-pop group After School.

She’s interesting. Yeah, I think she’s hot, but she’s also quite big, which is very unusual in Korean pop. She doesn’t look it so much in the above photo (taken from PopSeoul) above, but she is. She’s big boned and has a bit of a booty…you can get a better idea of that here.

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“I never saw myself as other than an Olympic champion,” Orser, now 48, said. “I never imagined not winning. Canada had hosted two Olympics and had no gold medals, the only host country not to win any. I took that personally. I felt I let everyone down.” Brian Orser, New York Times Feb. 20, 2010

The moment Coach Brian aficionados have been waiting for will soon be upon the world. On a cold Saturday night, Coach Brian disembarked a plane at Vancouver International Airport to be welcomed by a horde of screaming fans.
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Kind of interesting to think that there were people who played these games and probably viewed and felt the results in the same way that people that play Major League Baseball 2K10 (or in my case OOTP) do. I bet people used to play these games all day and keep track of a homemade league on a pad of paper.

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It’s no secret that a decent percentage of baseball players coming from Taiwan are of aboriginal descent.  And since we’re on the 19th century historiography tip, here’s a wonderful collection of late 19th century photos of Formosan Aborigines taken by the late Japanese anthropologist Tori Ryuzo.  Unfortunately, the names of the particular tribes are not specified, so anyone whose got some insights into that please weigh in.  (Hat tip @ the always-on-time Michael Turton).