In the end, even the Olympics couldn’t screw up a great international baseball championship. It was a classic pitcher’s duel, generally well-played by both sides, and mercifully decided prior to penalty kicks. All in all a riviting game.

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Thanks for the pancakes Olympics. Don’t forget your purse  and  shut the door on your way out. Bring on the WBC.

Lee Seung-yeop hit an opposite field fly ball that just kept carrying and carrying, finally landing in the left field seats to put Korea up to stay. While Lee will get plenty of headlines, it was the masterful circle-change of Ryu Hyun-jin that kept the powerful Cuban bats at bay over 8 1/3 innings and led Korea to its first ever win in major international play.

Cuba loaded the bases with one out in the ninth amidst some unexpected controversy that ended with Korean catcher Kang Min-ho getting tossed from the game for arguing balls and strikes. Following consecutive walks to Frederich Cepeda and Alexei Bell, Kang stood up, took off his mask and screamed at the Puerto Rican umpire. It wasn’t clear from the replay, but the umpire apparently threw Kang out of the game. Kang had to be restrained and threw his mask and glove into the dugout as he left the field.

In what was ultimately a savvy move manager Kim Kyung-moon removed Ryu from the game and replaced him with sidearmer Chong Tae-yong, who got Yuliesky Gourriel to ground into a game-ending double play.

With Korea holding to a 2-0 lead Michel Enriquez  hit a solo shot in the 4th to cut the lead in half. Korea scored again in the 7th off Pedro Lazo when Lee Yong-kyu doubled in Park Jin-man, who’d got on base via his first hit of the Olympics. Cuba countered again in the bottom half of the inning (Cuba got home field via coin flip BTW) with a towering home run by Bell.

A few thoughts….

On Kang’s ejection: I would call this another edition of Korean Athletes Behaving Badly, but he was basically in the right. Getting thrown out of a championship game in the bottom of the ninth is terrible, but not as bad as some of the calls were. Bell’s walk, after which Kang went on his tirade, wasn’t the worst of it. Two or three of the balls to Cepeda were clearly strikes, and the umpire had a wide zone going the entire night. Maybe others can chime in on this, and perhaps I was swayed by the tension, but these calls appeared to be so bad one might think the umpire was attempting to get Cuba back in the game. I don’t even want to think of what would have happened to Cuban Web pages had Korea lost this game due to bad umpiring.

On Cuba starting Norberto Gonzalez: Brilliant. A lefty sidearmer who’d only worked in relief prior to today. Korea’s lineup starts with four straight lefties. Unfortunately, they never had to face a very good one during this entire tournament. If they had, I’m not sure they’d have won the gold.  As it was, Gonzalez, who is a good but not great arm, basically held the Koreans in check over 5 2/3 innings. The two runs he was charged with  should have been unearned. The scorekeeper awarded Lee Yeong-kyu a single on a ball that fell between three fielders a la Bad News Bears. Lee Seung-yeop’s HR followed.

On what this means for Korean baseball: I noted this in the comments of a previous post, but this is  something of a coming out party for Korean baseball. There’s nothing the least bit fluky about this win and clearly this Korean team was  better than it’s Japanese rival. It will be fun to see the full Japan, including Ichiro, Dice-K and  hopefully  Team  Matsui, looking to avenge what worked out to be a fairly shameful showing,  next spring in the WBC. Don’t overlook the fact that Korea will be  adding  a resurrected Park Chan-ho, and  possibly Ryu Jae-kuk and Kim Byung-hyun, who will both be playing with sizable chips on their shoulders.      

On the Camerawork: My guess is the camerawork was done by the Chinese, and then the production touches  done in Korean studios. Again, if someone wants to shed some light here it’d be appreciated. The camerawork in this game was terrible. Park Jin-man was never even shown scoring on Lee Yeong-kyu’s double and the lack of replays on the ball calls that led to Kang’s ejection were unforgivable. There were several other plays where action was happening outside of the frame. Very bush league. I never expected a extravaganza one finds during in the World Series, but this work was incompetent.

A final  note on what this means for Korean baseball: When I arrived in Korea back in 2003 the country was still in the afterglow of the 2002 World Cup. Between the popularity of soccer and general anti-Americanism that’s often percolating under the surface in many quarters of the country, there have been times  that I wondered if baseball would ever regain it’s popularity. Well, it has. The KBO’s attendance levels are at an all time high, and this gold medal will really get people talking baseball again. A WBC win would raise  baseball’s profile in Korea  that much  higher. But the true explosion will occur when the next great Korean player  takes flight in MLB. It’s been a long time since the early years of Park Chan-ho  to now.