Sometimes its funny to read what people outside baseball think about baseball. Well, no it’s not. But how about if I presented you an article about Chien-Ming Wang written by someone who knows absolutely nothing about baseball, nothing about Taiwan, and very little about writing? Would that interest you? Thought so.
In America, there are hundreds of sports celebrities. Everyone knows the faces of Tiger Woods, Kobe Bryant, Brett Favre and Alex Rodriguez. Many can probably name the teams they’ve played for, their jersey number or how many titles they’ve won.
But in other countries, there is often one star that sits atop the sports world. Yao Ming, for example, is the definition of celebrity in China. The younger Chinese population looks up to Yao (both figuratively and literally) and basketball’s popularity has sky-rocketed.
McCoy writes a column for the Monterrey County — The Herald, where currently, the second most popular story is Boy wrapped in plastic gets $260K settlement. There’s nothing all that wrong with McCoy’s work here. She probably went to Taiwan and wondered “who is that guy?” and then wrote a column about it. By the way her column is called The Real McCoy. This is the kind of thing people are really going to miss when newspapers are dead.
In the States, Wang is just your average pitcher (currently slumping with a 14.46 ERA in seven appearances). But in Taiwan, he is a national icon.
I’ve spent the past week in Taipei and everywhere I turn I see Yankees gear — tees, keychains, shoes, necklaces, stickers, purses, hats. You name it. They have it.
His posters are in jewelry stores, his face is on milk cartons and his jerseys are sold on every street corner. The media has been transformed, too. Newspapers highlight any Yankees news and their games are broadcast daily
— even when he isn’t pitching!
Good use of the hyphen there. Gives it that children’s book kind of feel. The article morphs into something of a meditation on fame. Is it good or bad? McCoy isn’t sure, but one thing she is sure of is that people in Taiwan love Chien-Ming Wang. Wonderful. Here’s to hoping the Real McCoy spends her next summer vacation in South Korea.
Here’s the rest of the article.
21 responses so far ↓
1 hansioux // Jun 14, 2009 at 11:26 am
maybe that’s why people don’t read news papers anymore…
2 simon // Jun 15, 2009 at 1:01 am
Wang or Dice-K, who will end up with the worst year?
3 DJ // Jun 15, 2009 at 2:56 am
Wang. I blame the WBC!
4 Shinsano // Jun 15, 2009 at 6:32 am
I watched the start of Dice K’s start yesterday…I didn’t think he looked so bad. Wang’s velocity is down and his mechanics are a little different. I think there’s more to his problems.
Although that said, Dice K sure is getting bigger.
5 Chady // Jun 16, 2009 at 9:35 am
Ouch. I was once told by a professor to use hyphens in sentences to break up long blocks of text and i occasionally use them, but your point about it being like a kid’s book does ring true.
6 hansioux // Jun 16, 2009 at 8:07 pm
Wang’s velocity is back actually, and yet he still gets pounded. I think if his sinker isn’t working all the time, he should work in his slider/SFFand change up a bit more.
I swear he has decent slider if he just use it….
7 Shinsano // Jun 17, 2009 at 7:13 am
Chady, I use hyphens all the time. It’s been my chosen method of pause rather than using semicolons — which I hate. I was referring to the way she was using it to drop to the next line in order to build drama.
Sorry for the lack of posts everyone…both Jackson and I are at tournaments through the week.
8 hansioux // Jun 18, 2009 at 2:28 am
http://blog.roodo.com/Whither/archives/8720573.html
someone wrote an Pitch f/x analysis on Wang’s pitching. Granted it’s in Chinese, but I think the graphs speaks for themselves, since he didn’t really explain them either.
but many results are contrary to what people are saying.
For example, those who say Wang’s sinker isn’t sinking, instead it is more moving across the plate. Others are saying this is happening because Wang has a lower release point than his old self.
According the the Pitch f/x, they are just the opposite. Wang’s movement in 08 sinks less, moves to the inside corner more. Wang’s release point in 08 was lower, and the release point is even more consistent this year.
However, he took the data out of the 04/13/2009 game against the Rays. So his start speed is a bit slower than 08’s 95mph. However the last outing the speed has returned but things didn’t improve by much.
So… he needs to get more sink or more cut…. i’m gonna go with the Pitch f/x…
9 DJ // Jun 18, 2009 at 3:54 am
Hyphens rule. So do colons. Semicolons are alright too. But commas suck.
10 DJ // Jun 18, 2009 at 3:54 am
And never, ever use an exclamation point–unless your a children’s author. Or a child.
11 DJ // Jun 18, 2009 at 3:55 am
I meant “you’re”. Apostrophes suck.
12 Chan Ho Park // Jun 18, 2009 at 7:22 am
Is Wang’s velocity also on milk cartons? Because that is definitely gone missing…zing!
13 Chady // Jun 18, 2009 at 12:25 pm
Haha, I hadn’t posted in a while and just randomly wrote the first thing that popped into my head about the hyphens.
Good luck finding some gems at the tournaments this week.
14 EW // Jun 22, 2009 at 9:26 am
Couple of thoughts on this post.
1. McCoy is using dashes, not hyphens. There’s a difference between the two. Copy editing is one of those things we’ll miss when newspapers aren’t around anymore.
2. This is an every-other-week column written by a high-school girl that I’m guessing is published on a teen or community page. Do you guys really need to stoop so low that you pick on high school girls’ writing ability, or slam a newspaper for trying something different to get younger folks reading the paper? (Disclosure: When I was a high-school senior, I interned at my local newspaper. The internship spawned a lifelong interest in media and writing that continues to this day, 15-years later.)
Come on. Next time I see your parents I’ll ask them for writing samples from your high-school years then pick them apart on the Web. That’s bush-league.
15 Shinsano // Jun 22, 2009 at 12:51 pm
There’s really no way to know this is a kid’s column. It’s categorized as “People” and “Sports”. So I’ll give myself a freebie on that one since it’s really up to the paper (or perhaps a copy editor) to identify something like a kid’s column if it chooses to publish such a thing. I would never go out of my way to make fun of a column written by a child and in fact, I’d imagined McCoy as a retiree who’d taken a trip to Taiwan and needed something to write about.
16 EW // Jun 22, 2009 at 2:52 pm
Ah, I had gone in through the front page of the paper instead of following your link, and it was clearly marked as a high school student’s column. You must have gotten there via Google Reader or some such thing. That makes sense. It seemed out of character for you to pick on a high school kid.
17 DJ // Jun 23, 2009 at 1:41 am
What, high school kids get a pass for lousy writing because they’re in high school? Sorry, but I say if you’re published in a legit newspaper, your writing is fair game. What, we don’t want to hurt her feelings? Give me a break.
Aaron’s not “picking on” any poor little girl. He’s criticizing bad writing in a mainstream newspaper. Maybe next time he tries something like that he should research the identity of the author. So he doesn’t end up dissing anybody that the rest of us are supposed to condescend to.
18 EW // Jun 23, 2009 at 8:20 am
DJ,
That’s not my point. It’s fair to criticize a kid’s writing, but if doing so, it’s not the worst thing in the world to make the criticism private and constructive, rather than publicly and snidely shaming the kid.
That said, it’s clear Aaron didn’t know this was written by a kid.
19 hansioux // Jun 23, 2009 at 12:33 pm
this Japanese artist is very observant of dogs’ strange obsession with balls…
20 DJ // Jun 23, 2009 at 2:44 pm
No dude, I get your point. I just don’t think it’s a good one.
I will now publicly and snidely shame hansioux for his hilariously misplaced comment here.
21 hansioux // Jun 23, 2009 at 9:38 pm
lol, yeah, i didn’t even notice that i had closed the other tab.
i hereby make known that i am in no way implying Ms./Mrs. McCoy is a dog with strange obsession with balls.
not that people’d think that way before i said anything….
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