From Korea Beat:
Hot Pants Slasher Behind Bars
On the 18th the 12th Court of Incheon sentenced a 20-year old named Lee to seven years in prison for seeking sexual gratification by slashing the inner thighs of women wearing short skirts or shorts.
Now why would someone have to take something as fun as hot pants and ruin […]

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Interesting controversy earlier in the week concerning Team Canada as the guy supposed to be the squad’s No. 1 starter Scott Richmond was called up to the big leagues by the Blue Jays. Check out this rip in the Globe and Mail:
It’s still difficult to wrap your head around the Toronto Blue Jays’ calling up […]

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The 90th Koushien Tournament starts Aug. 2. Simon wrote a couple posts on the prequalifiers in Tokyo and then on Monday wrote a nice primer for the tournament which includes a info on the geographic makeup of the tournament, some interesting historical facts about Koushien and a couple You Tube clips. I’d also recommend the Wikipedia page […]

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News out of E-town is that two 18-year-olds playing for the Cuban junior baseball team have apparently left the Edmonton area and are making their way to Central America.
“These kids want to be able to see their dream to play baseball in the major leagues so this is a way to do it,” the agent […]

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Just found this Web site devoted to all the Korean actresses who have never had plastic surgery. Most of the profiles include high school photos and several commercial pics. The most recent post concerns Song Hye Kyo (photo above).
Unfortunately the post is from March and the blog itself only has 13 total posts since it […]

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Sorry for the lack of KBO updates and rankings. First, as I’ve mentioned several times I was in the U.S. But secondly is the fact that inning.co.kr, the homegrown KBO stats site I use, has been down for a few weeks. According to the site things should be up and running on July 31, which […]

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Yoo Jee-ho at the JoongAng Daily has an article about the new time-saving rule for the Olympics. His reaction is a tempered one and he urges fans to “view the change as a new challenge.”
However that wasn’t the reaction of Sun Dong-yol, formerly a pitching coach of the Korean national team.
“We might as well decide […]

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I’ve never been inclined to believe that I have any sort of special powers, but there’s no doubting the fact that the lives of several of the players I mentioned in my That Minor League Game I Went to… post have had their lives severely altered within a one week span. Divine? Probably not. Coincience? […]

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I’m a couple weeks late on this, but it’s worth a note. Anyone have a Benihana experience they’d like to share?
Rocky Aoki, who founded the theatrical Benihana chain of steakhouses, where Japanese chefs with flashing knives double as performers, died Thursday night in Manhattan. He was 69.
The cause was pneumonia, said Nancy Bauer, a spokeswoman […]

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I don’t have a big beef with Ned Colletti himself. I’m not necessarily a hater of Joe Torre either. I just thought Frank McCourt’s ousting of Paul DePodesta terrible, as was the shaft he (they) gave Grady Little last offseason. Ever heard of Karma Mr. McCourt?
The Dodgers picked up Casey Blake from the Indians, without spending a […]

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Bling from beewado.com

I’ll meet you outside the front gate of Munhak at say, six?

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Korean cities are perfectly functional – for Koreans. This makes drawing international tourists a tricky proposition. It’s getting better, but strewn about the country the carcasses of hare-brained ideas meant to draw foreign visitors that never quite panned out. World’s fair style towers, dilapidated amusement parks, “western” style bars. Koreans are often the worst judges of what a […]

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If you’re like me you’ve always had a keen interest in the pirates that scour the south seas, but other than the odd news report here and there, have never really learned much about them. Well, here’s a great summary piece by The Economist, detailing the trials and tribulations of dealing with the mostly Somalian […]

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I’m trying to come up with a clever name for this superball 11th inning Olympic abomination. Any ideas out there? Senichi Hoshino, the manger of Team Japan blasted the new rule yesterday, saying he wants to “strongly protest” the change. I don’t blame him. To have a rule change like this thrown at them two […]

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I’m reading a fantastic book called Pitching Around Fidel: A Journey into the Heart of Cuban Sports by S.I. Price, which is part travelllogue, part disection of the great (but disintegrating) Cuban sports machine. The book was written in the late part of the last millenium, but much of it still holds true.
Here’s an article […]

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It seems like rumors of the CPBL’s demise have become as predictable as Nick Markakis’ second-half surges, but things have gone from bad to worse for Taiwan’s professional league in recent weeks. Just a few days after the Brother Elephants–Taiwan’s most popular professional team–threatened to fold at the end of the 2007 season, new […]

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A few weeks ago, MLB released a list of predicted ‘08 free agents and their current salaries.  After giddily reading through the list, out of awe and curiosity I calculated that the roughly 199 players on the list will earn a combined $285 million and change during the 2007 season. This is […]

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Just when I started to get a little excited about olympic baseball — afterall I’m planning to go watch some practice games in Seoul the first week of August, and the Aug. 16 matchup between Korea and Japan should be fun given the recent political floundering.
And now this:
The Olympic baseball tournament will institute a new […]

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Dig this article by Nate Silver as part of the free BP: it’s called Lies, Damned Lies — Shrinking the Ballpark and concerns the fewer number of seats being built in most of the planned ballparks. With the opening of the new Yankee Stadium (which has 6,000 fewer seats than the original), Dodger Stadium will […]

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This will probably be one of those posts that a lot of readers in America could care less about and won’t find the slightest bit novel, but when I was recently in Sacramento around my sister’s house a sign caught my eye advertising a sushi sports bar.
I like sushi and I have an soft spot […]

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