We haven’t had many basketball related posts here on EWC. There was my ill-fated attempt at following Jianlian Yi’s progress in the NBA, and then there was the time that Jackson decided to not only publically admit he was a T-wolves fan, but went so far to spend some energy venting about Kevin McHale. Although, I have to say, that post did produce a great moment in the comments section.

Fact is, basketball isn’t that interesting when you think about it. Particularly in Asia — even with the two-time KBL champs in my own backyard. However, that may have changed with the announcement that Starbury will be spending six full weeks playing in China’s CBL with the Shanxi Fenjiu (named for a local grain alcohol). The team is more commonly known as the Brave Dragons. Starbury is more commonly known as the crazy guy with a tattoo on his head that used to play in the NBA.

Since his arrival Starbury has learned how to say “Happy New Year,” and won the staunch support of his coach by…keeping his dinner order tastefully low-key (as opposed to one of these).

“People say this and that about him, but let me tell you, I had dinner with him last night and it was so simple, chicken fried rice. That’s it,” Brave Dragons coach Wu Qinglong said.

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The international alcohol consuming community was riveted by a shocking report that a Taiwanese whisky, Kavalan, defeated its English and Scottish rivals in a blind taste test.

According to a publication called Luxist:

The contest took place in a hostelry north of Edinburgh and when the results were announced whisky connoisseur Charles MacLean exclaimed “Oh my God, is this an April Fools?” The scores tallied up with Taiwan’s Kavalan receiving 27.5 points out of a possible 40, with the next place (the premium Scottish brand Langs) scoring only 22 points. The other competitors were Scotland’s King Robert (20 points), England’s St George (15.5 points), and Scotland’s Bruchladdich X4+3 (only 4.5 points out of the possible 40).

As several of our devoted readers pointed out on my facebook page recently, the LA Dodgers are making a much-anticipated trip to Taiwan to play an exhibition series against the CPBL’s finest.

There has been speculation as to which members of the Dodgers will come exactly.  Many out here are skeptical that they’ll bring their A-team. And with good reason:  It’s a long, arduous trip over, at least 18 hours door to door.  People eat weird stuff here, like sow’s ear, innards, fish eyes.  Language difficulties.

But fear not Dodgers:  There are western restaurants everywhere in Taiwan, top notch quality service at world class hotels, and a feature of Taiwan that should be the kicker:  KTV girls.

So here’s my plea to Manny, Kemp, Torre and company:  Before you scoff at heading over to Formosa, take a look at what you’ll miss out on after you drub a team you should beat even with severe jetlag play your well-contested match against Taiwan’s few remaining greatest non-suspended pros. And this has nothing to do with the fact that I have a VIP pass to the event.  Honest.

I’m a hack amateur at best, but I’ve been having fun taking photos lately.   I thought readers might enjoy a pictoral glimpse into the day-to-day goings on of baseball in Taiwan.  The above, for example, is a bunch of dead bees gathered and artfully placed on a ball by some high school students– after a bee hive got overturned underneath the home team’s dugout.

Photos after the jump.

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Gearing up for the upcoming season, I thought I’d bring our readers’ attention to an excellent site.  Japan Baseball News–a collaborative effort from long-time Japanese baseball guru Bob Bavasi and site author Brandon Siefken–is an effective and well-done site covering professional and amateur baseball in Japan.

The site features free content containing scouting reports, draft analysis and the like, a free research archive with pitch plot scouting reports, videos of players, and a litany of other tools, as well as paid content giving readers access to up-to-date stats from NPB.

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Not exactly a new subject, but I think it’s becoming more topical because for the first time during my life in Korea I can see unification of some kind on the horizon. Like within 2 or 3 years. I named a section on my side blog Post-DPRK Collapse Theories, which was meant to be a layman’s view of a post-DPRK South Korea.

It’s an idea I haven’t been looking forward to and have been pretty negative about, yet I think I’m qualified to write about it and I think it’ll make for some interesting discussion. Just yesterday I started considering the scouting possibilities, and that perked me up a little. However, in general, I think the reality of it will be a bad thing for foreigners living in Korea.

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As Jackson mentioned, during our hiatus I fooled around with my own blog idea. Oh sure, we had our moments, me and Busan Lights, we had our alcohol-fueled bleary-eyed romps at 3 a.m. where we woke up in the morning not sure where we were. But it was never the same as with EWC. And I never told anyone about it.

I was hesitant to restart EWC. At one point I told Jackson that restarting would be kind of like sleeping with an ex-girlfriend. Sure, it would feel good at first, but then after a a few hours (a few minutes in Jackson’s case) it’s over and you’re back looking at the same rear end you walked out on in the first place.

Which isn’t to say Jackson has a bad rear end or that I have any idea about his rear end, but I did manage to compare blogging to sex in the opening two paragraphs of this comeback, so I guess I’m ready to roll.

Like a hair metal band after a long hiatus, Aaron and I realized that we missed rocking out on EWC. So we’re getting it rolling again. We were putting our zany yet informative posts about baseball and things Asia-related on Facebook, but it just wasn’t the same. Aaron started a solo project that sold a few thousand copies, while I started my new project: photograpy and film-making. Other Asia-related internet pursuits just weren’t the same.

Before we get things rolling again, we decided to lay down a few ground rules for the site:

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I think anyone who’s read EWC for any length of time knows we’re usually good for a post or two per day most of the time. However, that just hasn’t been the case during the past 3 or 4 months. The readership has declined somewhat, and I think the quality has suffered at times, but this has been mostly a good thing for Jackson and I — because it’s meant we’ve been busier doing something we love (scouting).

Of course our dear readers see very little of this fruit, because the deeper we get into baseball the less we can share here. The more we belong to our employers, the more responsibility we take on as representatives thereof. Fun language Shinsano. What a great blog this turned into. Yes. We walked the line for a little while. We occasionally complained about this some out loud, but that didn’t make for good reading either.

What I’m saying here is that we aren’t shutting EWC down completely…you may find something here again someday…but we are going on an extended indefinite hiatus that may or may not end. It’s not easy to do. Personally, I got into this for the writing first, and I always can find time for that.

So at least for now, thanks to everyone for tuning in and please don’t ever hesitate to contact Jackson or I at eastwindupchronicle@gmail.com, which we both check frequently and use for other purposes besides the blog. We’re also both on Facebook and Linkdin if you want to go that route. I’d like to name some of our readers and contributors, both past and present, but I don’t want to leave anyone out. You know who you are. You guys helped make this place a fun place to write and hang out pretty much every day for 2 years and change.

All the best — and many thanks,

Aaron Tassano (Shinsano)

Cary Jackson Broder

I think I’m going to be deferring to Matt for the KBO coverage this year (check out his series preview here), but Lotte’s game 1 win is certainly worth a mention here considering Royster’s finest were swept out of the post-season last year. This gives the Giants home field, which is a big advantage for them.

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I saw this story on Marmot’s today and it caught my eye for a number of reasons. The above statue is being built by North Korean workers, in Senegal.

The story in AP doesn’t mention the statue is being built by North Korean workers until the 16th paragraph of this story, which I guess I find a little odd. That’s not to say that the headline should be “Senegal Moves Toward Socialism,” or anything, but it certainly deserves more than a buried mention.

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As expected the U.S. won the World Cup, winning its 14th consecutive game in Europe without all that stiff of a challenge. The victory gives the U.S. its second consecutive World Cup championship and fourth overall.

But I want to point people to the lede written by BA’s John Manuel in his game report….

Once again, America’s top minor leaguers succeeded where its big leaguers have failed.

He’s right. Why is that?

I recently submitted an entry into a fun project called the Rogue’s Baseball Index, the brainchild of the blog Pitchers and Poets, of whom longtime EWC friend and occasional illustrator Ted is a part of.

In short the Index, in the words of the creators, is “a growing dictionary of the baseball terms that they didn’t teach you in Little League, and that you won’t hear about in the director’s commentary to Angels in the Outfield.”

Some of the entries are hilarious, with names like The Constanza, The McCarverism, and this funny one…Hold On, It’s a Bunt!:

The Cine-Bunt is trick play most often seen at the climax of baseball movies. A big power hitter will come to the plate, at a time when a home run would win or tie the game. The hitter puts on a show of being ready to launch one into the ether, even going so far as to call his own shot by pointing into the outfield. Then, just as the ball is hurtling in towards home plate, the power hitter defies all expectation and drops down a perfect bunt, befuddling the opposition, the crowd, and the movie viewer.
Notable Cine-Bunts (**SPOILER ALERT**):
Tom Berenger as Jake Taylor’s Cine-Bunt at the end of Major League

My contributions are 3 New Terms From Asian Baseball found in the Baseball Abroad category and include The Nervous Lee, The Taiwan Sizzle, and Pocket Crayon Washing Machine — from Korea, Taiwan and Japan respectively.

When I first glanced at this I thought a snake had been found with a foot in it’s stomach. I got up, made some coffee, and pondered that a little — even going so far as to imagine writing a post with a joke about Yao Ming and how they’d finally amputated his oft injured foot and that a snake had gotten a hold of it.

However, a snake that grew a foot is much weirder. And it’s kind of funny that a Chinese woman would see it on her wall and kill it, like one would kill an ant. I’d be running for the hills.

Story from Telegraph here. Thanks to Mr. Korea Beat for the heads up.

Really intriguing fight developing between Sony ATV (publishing) and YG Entertainment (wikipedia entry here), who are one of two major Korean pop music conglomerates, over what Sony is calling copyright infringement. First, the tunes in question, then my completely unbiased opinions.

This is G-Dragon’s “Heartbreaker,” which as far as I know is still the No. 1 song in the country. It’s not bad, in the way the song that it’s charged with copying isn’t bad. And I can deal with G-Dragon’s current look, which reminds me of early 70s David Bowie and is at least a little on the odd side (for Korean pop music).

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Last year I tried to go out on a limb and say Kia would challenge for a playoff spot in 2008. I was a year off, but my reasoning was quite wrong. I thought the continued (re)development of ex-MLB guys like Seo Jae-woong and Choi Hee-seop would eventually gel with younger talents like Han Ki-joo and Yoon Suk-min.

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Mark Hulet from Fangraphs dedicated an entire post to the Korean Cubs, focusing on Hak-ju Lee, but also Rhee Dae-eun, Su Jung-min and Jae-hoon Ha. He’s complementary all the way around.

I like and respect Fangraphs quite a bit and think Hulet is one of the more knowledgeable guys doing this kind of prospect analysis, so it was a lot of fun to come across this.

Read Hak-Ju Lee Leads Impressive Wave of Talent here.

Another big article via MLB.com international signings, this one concerns the Twins Max Kepler-Rozycki, recently signed out of Germany.

At 16, Max Kepler-Rozycki already is garnering quite a bit of attention. The 6-foot-3, 193-pound outfielder from Berlin was recently signed by the Twins and given a $775,000 bonus — the largest amount ever given to a position prospect outside of the U.S. and Latin America.

He’s got a very interesting background, being the son of two ballet dancers.

Pretty lengthy and interesting article on MLB.com about the Red Sox and the Japanese players the team has signed in recent years. I say interesting because we get some quotes by Red Sox players and management talking about what it’s like to have (or be) four Japanese players on one team, and how the cross-cultural environment plays out in a big league clubhouse.

“Other guys like Manny Delcarmen, there’s no need for me to talk about his baseball skills, but I also know that he’s a very caring human being,” Saito said. “I feel that all of us, we get to be teammates even off of the field, which is very nice. Daniel Bard is young, but he also understands what I’m trying to say and he’s never condescending. So for all these guys that I get to work with, they’re all very different from the stereotypical image I might have had of big league pitchers and they all treat me with a great deal of respect.”

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On Sept. 16 SK and LG played to a 2-2 draw, but before that you’d have to go back to Aug. 23 to find the team’s last loss, a 2-1 game against Kia. The fact the team has done it without it’s best pitcher, Kim Kwang-hyun, who has been on the DL since getting hit in the hand by a line drive, makes the streak all the more amazing.

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