According to Baseball America the A’s have signed 16-year-old, 6-foot-7, 210-pound Michel Inoa of the Dominican Republic. The price tag? Well, lets just say it’s more than what a lot of teams spend internationally on several players — $4.25 million.
What’s all the more shocking is that it’s the A’s, a team that hasn’t done much internationally […]

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You might have heard about the controversy surrounding the Japanese mobile phone company that used a monkey politician running under the banner “change” that Barack Obama fans took offense to. I’m not sure what to make of this myself — I think it’s a little far fetched, because it assumes that the writers not only speak English, […]

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Well, not exactly a case against, but this is a Chicago-based writer musing on what might not have happened had the White Sox league-high $50 million bid for Kosuke Fukudome been accepted. Mostly this means the team wouldn’t have traded for Nick Swisher, who’s been finally swinging a good bat as of late.
While the 23-year-old […]

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It’s official: Taiwan’s storied Nan-Ying High School’s staff anchor, 5′11 Right-hander Huang Wei-Sheung, is headed for the Atlanta Braves.  The move, which area baseball afficionados had been anticipating for quite some time, nets $120,000 for Huang and gets the Braves a battle-tested if not unspectacular arm. Huang, who has hit 89 but sits on 85-87 […]

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Two very different kinds of explosions, both carefully crafted and fitted for media consumption. First is the demolition of the Yongbyon Cooling Tower in North Korea, which, I guess is supposed to mean to someone somewhere that North Korea no longer has nuclear capability.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r3UnhTDuQQc

Wow. I guess that’s a wrap, eh?
Or, um, maybe not. From the World […]

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I might have reported on this yesterday had the blog been working, but it’s just as well that I couldn’t. Here’s a short ESPN summary:
Former major league pitcher Danny Rios was suspended for one year by Japanese baseball on Saturday after testing positive for a banned substance. Rios, a 35-year-old right-handed pitcher with the Yakult […]

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Not sure if you noticed, but the site was down for about 18 hours from early Saturday morning to Sunday. It was apparently a server problem, but it’s been solved and there shouldn’t be any more problems until the next time it happens. If you’ve ever worked on a blog you know how scary that […]

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A Japanese IT company, along with researchers from Keio University, have developed a high-tech brainstroming room that actually listens to its inhabitants and then locates and feeds them data and images to raise creativity.
From Pink Tentacle:
The system — called “Kage Roi” — relies on a speech-recognition capable computer that monitors the brainstorming session via microphone, […]

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About a week ago Korea Beat translated a preview/review of a good-looking Korean film called Crossing (크로싱), which opened in theaters here in early June. After reading some about the making and marketing of the film, my guess is it will open in the U.S. and other countries in the not too distant future.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ThXzb4QSMzE

Synopses from English […]

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Interesting news bit posted by the new Japanese baseball blog NPB Tracker, reporting that the Hanshin Tigers are scouting Lotte’s Lee Dae-ho. This despite the fact that Lee doesn’t fulfill his service requirement for another three years.
I was thinking about the idea — in my mind Lee is the best pure hitter in Korea. He […]

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I doubt too many people heard about this, but prior to his major league debut last Saturday at Yankee Stadium, Reds pitcher Daryl Thompson, along with fellow rookie Jay Bruce, got on the No. 4 subway line headed for the Bronx. Except, they got on the platform headed to Brooklyn.
When I lived in Brooklyn I […]

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I like subject of this article — the fact that Dodgers GM Ned Colletti isn’t doing a very good job, but this a very weird column by the LA Times T.J. Simers. Seems like a prime target for a FJMing…I’ll try to avoid doing it in that style, but it’s hard not to.
The article sub-headline […]

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Danwei has a post about Ye Shumeng, a Chinese born graphic designer now living in Helsinki, who has produced a book of photography about Warrior Sneakers — an iconic Chinese-designed sneaker from the 1970s.
From Book of Warriors:
Three decades later, these sneakers are still well known among the Chinese people but they are no longer objects of […]

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This article does my heart good for several reasons. One is, I left my heart in Oakland. Two is, because I loved Rickey Henderson as a young baseball fan and have deep respect for Jimmy Rollins.
The Coliseum is nothing new to Jimmy Rollins. He and his Phillies played an interleague series in Oakland in 2005. […]

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Sorry, but this sounds ridiculous.
Cameron Hughes is his team’s biggest fan. Depending on his mood, he might pull off one of the multiple team jerseys he wears and spin it wildly in the air, scream at the top of his lungs, and exhort fellow supporters to do the same. Or he might pull an old […]

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Here’s a book idea I think some people have been waiting for. Bridging the Statistical Gap by Eric J. Seidman (Statistically Speaking, Fangraphs, and Baseball Prospectus) aims to serve as a fan’s first foray into sabermetrics. I did a quick interview with Eric, asking him to explain said gap, talk about his own path in baseball statistical analysis, and […]

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Just to update our conversation about countryside baseball venues here’s a shot of Lotte’s home away from home in Masan (about 45 minutes west of Busan), where the Giants took on SK last night. I don’t know much about Masan Baseball Stadium, except that it was used by pro Korean teams prior to the KBO.

I’ve never […]

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Since we’re talking about small, out-of-the-way stadiums in the Korean and Japanese countryside, I was curious what is Asia’s largest stadium. A bit of a surprise here — it’s Rungrado May Day Stadium in Pyongyang (capacity 150,000). It in fact has the largest stadium capacity in the world.

Actually, it’s not a huge surprise. Afterall, Kim […]

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This is one of those sequences that had this happened when I was playing a baseball simulation game as a kid I would have become so frustrated at the unlikelihood I would have said “no” out loud, picked up the dice, and redone the play.

By the way that was Felix’s 9th plate appearance. Six of […]

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I go to a lot of weddings in Korea. My wife works for a big company and all her friends are of Korean marrying age. Going to a bunch of weddings might seem like torture for some of you, but I enoy it. Well, I enjoy the buffets. This probably sounds rude if you’ve never been to a Korean wedding, but trust me, […]

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