In 2000, Lotte catcher Lim Soo-hyuk collapsed after running from first to second base during a game versus the LG Twins. He fell into a coma and never came out of it – dying at Kangdong Sacred Heart Hospital in Seoul on Feb. 7.
I hate to use a death or a funeral to make what I [...]

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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, [...]

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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 [...]

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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 [...]

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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 [...]

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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 [...]

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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 [...]

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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 [...]

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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 [...]

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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 [...]

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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 [...]

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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 [...]

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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 [...]

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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 [...]

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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 [...]

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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 [...]

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You might think I’m doing a post on Formula One coming to Korea because I know something about it. Wrong. I once watched Formula One in a Camden apartment I was house-sitting at in London. That was about eight years ago and I haven’t seen or heard of it since.
But the fact that it’s coming [...]

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Found this on ESPN, and then a more expanded story from The Biz of Baseball, which goes into some further history of MLB’s activities in China.
The MLB Development Center is located at Dongbeitang High School in Xishan District, Wuxi, which is located in the eastern part of China on the Yangtze River . The center [...]

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Neat article at Baseball Analysts detailing who has the Best Fastballs in Baseball, as broken down into measurements of Control, Velocity and Movement. The writer is using his own method of pitch classification, which is different from that of MLB.com’s Gameday. As I think people are finding out with Pitch F/x, some pitches aren’t easily [...]

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Pretty good day of baseball on Sunday as the World Cup moved to the final eight. The seedings still are not quite set as there is a couple of makeup games being played today, one involving the U.S. and Australia, who will be one and two in Group G.
Team USA beat Italy 12-3 and Justin [...]

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