This will appeal to just a few, but Jens Lekman, who is probably my favorite current singer songwriter in the world, played in Korea last night. This was a big treat for me. For those who don’t know him I’ll send you to Wikipedia and include a song at the end of the post.
His first [...]

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There are only a couple really notable names moving from NPB to MLB this season, and with the help of some Chone projections from Sean Smith I detailed those in a post earlier in the week.
But at the time he asked if there were any other names I wanted projections for — you know, players [...]

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We at EWC would like to wish a happy Thanksgiving to all of our stateside readers and your families.
In the spirit of the holiday, I think it’s only right that we list the things we’re thankful for. I’ll go first: My lovely wife and daughter, working for the Twins, Obama, family and friends, [...]

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Just when you think there may be one or two things left inconceivable by the human imagination, it turns out that reports of organ harvesting–especially of Falun Gong members–turns out to be real.
I saw a lot of Falun Gong protestors in Hong Kong and New York City, and always kind of dismissed them as wackos [...]

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Had the pleasure of attending the Guang Hai Cup (or “CARE” cup) in Taitung over the past weekend. It featured eight of Taiwan’s major high school programs, teams of primarily aboriginal kids from the East coast of Taiwan. Eastern Taiwan is a terrestrial paradise, a far departure from the smog, noise, pollution, [...]

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From Korea Beat. Some policemen in Masan take a load off and play some ball in the parking lot. The original post suggests they were supposed to be at a candlelight vigil, but a commenter claims the original story states they were just taking a break.
Hmm. In either case, if it was an anti U.S. [...]

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Although the fact that they managed to swipe a number of wallets before getting caught is a little impressive. Usually there are so many people working at duty free stores, they seem like an unlikely place for shoplifting paydirt.

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I have to admit, I was kind of hoping Rain’s post-America-failure return to Korea would go less swimmingly. It hasn’t. He’s as big as he ever was — if not bigger. Just tonight my wife was telling me about the comments section of a Rain-related story, in which a number of girls were talking about [...]

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Great retrospective on Rickey Henderson at Athletics Nation. All kinds of scanned newspaper clippings, quotes and prose about the great one.

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We’ve been following the saga of Dinesh Patel and Rinku Singh since they won the Million Dollar Arm contest.  Since they just signed with the Bucs, we though it would be useful to readers to get some information on the players and their attributes, so here’s a brief write up to get to know the [...]

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As was reported first on NPB Tracker with a Japan Yahoo! story and then confirmed later by ESPN, the Pittsburgh Pirates have signed Rinku Singh and Dinesh Patel, the two boys from India that were found at the “Million Dollar Arm” contest that took place last year that I’ve covered in posts, here and here [...]

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You might remember last year I asked Sean “Chone” Smith to do some projections for the incoming 2008 class of NPB pitchers. Before we get into whether or not Chone is bullish on Kenshin Kawakami and Koji Uehara for 2009 lets take a quick look back at what the expectations were for Hiroki Kuroda, who [...]

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I feel like I’ve seen this around a little bit on the internets, but maybe I’m dreaming that. This is a new ad for the Nokia N96 cell phone featuring a digitally inserted Bruce Lee playing ping-poing with nunchucks. I’m no Bruce Lee expert — but this is pretty damn cool.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpJAxqD6jiY

Nokia is issuing a Hong [...]

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It’s probably noteworthy that this story has made it into the mainstream news (ie. Yahoo!’s picks-and-pans front page news) even though European countries have also leased land in Africa. Although, according to the article those countries haven’t snapped up such large areas.
Ninety-nine years is a bit long to call a “lease” and 32 million acres is [...]

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Very interesting situation went down over the past week in the KBO. It mostly happened while I was in Japan so I thought I’d wait until it was resolved to check in with a report. Last weekend our friends at Woori dumped Jang Won-sam, a young-ish lefty (26) coming off a breakthrough season that established [...]

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Good article by Jim Allen for ESPN talking about the different options teams have available from Japan. I think with any group of free agents the market and the mood of those paying can go any number of ways at any given time. Allen is calling it “questionable” here, and it is in its infant state, [...]

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Lee Hyo-ri is so overexposed in Korea right now…I can’t believe I’m about to say this, but I’m almost tired of looking at her. Others living here are already to this point. On any typical weekend you’ll find two or three different shows — simply featuring her traipsing around the countryside…going to great lengths to [...]

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You may or may not have already heard Google has archived 10 million Life magazine photos, some which date back to the 1750s. A number of the photos have never been published. I played around with this a little this morning and came up with some goodies in a Japan — Baseball search. 
The above photo is from a [...]

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And Ted reacts…

As do:
King Kaufman
Mike Mussina’s moments aren’t enough to earn Hall of Fame pass
If Mike Mussina gets into the Hall of Fame, should he go in as an Oriole or Yankee?
Mike Mussina says he knew from Day 1 that 2008 would be his last season
Retrospect:
June 2, 1987: Opening Day for Draft
August 15, 1991: First [...]

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In Nigeria
Among the programmes slated for early next year is meeting with the America Ambassador in Nigeria.
“That will be a good starting point for us because America is the home of baseball and the meeting with the Ambassador will open doors for us to reach other America companies in Nigeria”, explains Jani Mohammed who is [...]

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