Not quite sure why, but started researching Babe Ruth’s historic 1934 visit to Japan, in which over 100,000 people lined the streets of Ginza to catch a glimpse of the Bambino. In the process, discovered via Google some fantastic works by artist Ben Sakoguchi. From his website:
Sakoguchi was born in 1938 in San [...]

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I recently watched a documentary called Tom Waits — Under Review (1971-1982), about the early phase of Waits career. It was interesting because I’d never really given much thought to his beatnik hobo, barfly phase, outside of the fact that I knew it existed from listening to albums like Heartattack and Vine and Closing [...]

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The title of this NYT story, A Culture Clash for South Korean Players on the L.P.G.A. Tour, is a bit of a misnomer, because mostly the writer is talking about how swimmingly things are going since the LPGA Tour’s commissioner, Carolyn Bivens, dropped the plan to require foreign-born players to speak English. But anyway, there’s [...]

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New evidence of match fixing has emerged in the latest CPBL scandal, as 14 players–including six foreigners–have now been implicated. (The link for some reason only bothered to mention the foreigners involved).
The scandal has already caused one of the leagues six teams–the now defunct D Media T-Rex–to fold, and now involves Chinatrust Whales [...]

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Note: This article first appeared in the Taipei Times November 2nd, 2008.
After falling behind 3-2 in the series after a contentious Game 5 marked by controversy and theatrics, the Brother Elephants evened up the CPBL Taiwan Series at three games apiece yesterday, defeating the Uni-President Lions 5-0 and forcing a deciding Game 7 tonight in [...]

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