Does this situation sound familiar? A Korean team dominates  the tournament, scoring an emotional upset over Japan and destroying other teams, reaching the final undefeated, playing a Japanese team it already beat….

And then. Then, as happened in the 2006 World Baseball Classic, the Japanese team stops Korea in its path, erasing every previous accomplishment with a single stoke.

The SK Wyvrens are so well prepared, execute so well, its easy to imagine them beating the Chunichi Dragons again on Sunday, but as is the case in a championship game–it’s indeed a single game and everything  acomplished previously is out the window. In what was possibly the most surprising result of the tournament thus far, SK (from Korea,  where  your Aaron Shinsano lives)  obliterated  what was thought to have been a evenly matched opponent in the Taiwanese League champion Uni Lions (from Taiwan, where your Jackson Broder lives).

The game was  never close and was discontinued by the mercy rule  after the Lions  batted in the seventh inning. The final was 13-1.  The Wyvrens wasted no time getting to Lions starter Pete Munro with a pair of runs in the first inning on RBI singles by Lee Ho-joon and Park Jae-sang. In the second SK tagged the American import with six more runs, including a solo HR off the bat of Park Jung-kwon and a Park Jae-hong bases loaded single. SK led 8-0 by the end of the second.

If one merely walked into the stadium and saw the scoreboard they might have thought they were seeing the Chunichi/China Stars result  from the afternoon game. That game ended 9-1 in favor of Chunichi, but was much closer (especially by Team China standards) than the final indicates. China held to a 1-0 lead for half the game, to the extent that the Korean announcers voices were beginning to rise in anticipation of a historic upset.

But the Chinese team did what it has done during the entire Konami Cup, which is play teams fairly tight through the first four or five innings, before completely collapsing-walks, errors, swinging at pitches in the dirt. Inoue Kazuki hit a line drive into the left-field seats in the bottom of the fifth and Araki Masahiro followed in the sixth with another solo shot.  It was all Bad  News  Tigers from there on as China gave up six in the next frame to make the end score a much more Team Chinaesque 9-1. Watching the Chinese team makes you want to give coaches Jim Lefebvre, Bruce Hurst, and now starring Barry Larkin, some kind of medal of honor, or at least a hug.