Here’s the best, most comprehensive article on Kim Ng that you’d ever want to read. This comes from Yahoo!’s Tim Brown. He’s setting the stage for what should be a very interesting offseason relative to the hiring or non-hiring of Ng. The number of excuses has dwindled to almost zero (unless you simply think a woman […]

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I never saw an official retirement from Woody Williams, but as you probably know he was released by the Astros just days before the season started and isn’t playing anymore. His Wikipedia page says he’s retired. His right leg says he’s retired. But I never saw official word. Maybe he’s coming back. Maybe he’s going […]

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The Korean baseball career of Jose Lima came to a quiet end yesterday as the Kia Tigers released the 36-year-old pitcher, replacing him with Kane Davis who made 15 starts for the Syracuse Sky Chiefs in 2008, and has appeared in 102 games for a handful of MLB teams.
Lima hasn’t been that bad for Kia since […]

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The Tokyo Design Festa is happening right now. It looks like a lot of fun. Japundit has all kinds of wild photos covering the event. This is my favorite:

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Sports on My Mind is one of the better sports blogs/sites around in my opinion and often focuses on race in the sports media, which is of course a topic the mainstream media rarely tackles with much conviction. In fact, the site was the only one that I could find (besides EWC) that strongly came […]

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Marc Hulet over at Baseball Analysts has a fun post about a hypothetical expansion team skimming the minor leagues to cobble together a pitching staff. I think we could do the same here for guys that should come play in Asia. Of course some players are more suited to play in Asia than others — […]

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I’ve heard of Wally Yonamine and seen him mentioned in books, but never thought too much about the man some call “The Jackie Robinson” of Japanese baseball. Yonamine was the first ethnic Japanese to play professional football in America, and then following a career ending injury became the first American to play professional baseball in […]

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Obviously I’m joking, but I’ll tell ya…it gets hard to think about things to write about a team that is dominating the league so thoroughly. The Wyverns were 21-3 during the month of June, and even though Doosan is off to a better start than last year and playing at a very respectable .577 clip — […]

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I’ve failed you dear readers. The third installation of the Racing Model Billiard Championships — Korea vs. Russia started a few weeks ago and I haven’t brought you a single update. You can find the main site here, which has a little TV preview and photos of the participants.
Here’s some coverage of the individual matchups (maybe NSFW). Yes, this […]

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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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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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