I know...I was rooting for Korea, too (mostly the underdog thing, plus the Japanese team seems to be like the Asian Yankees, a little...LOL...and when they brought in Kim, I had a worried little feeling like, is this the best idea? :(

I was like...oh, no...not again...

Sigh.

And then I thought, hey, give him a chance, those were different seasons, he seems to have done better in Colorado, plus he MUST have already pitched some scoreless innings in the WBC, since hardly ANY runs have been given up by Korean pitchers (I hadn't watched any Korean games yet)! But, no...:(

Yeah... >.<

I felt the same way. Then Tap had to call me and tell me Korea was getting their asses kicked.

LOL she called me, too!

It's funny, too, because two of my cousins actually called my FROM KOREA just to bitch about him. They were so pissed. I don't think that man can ever return to the motherland because the baseball fans will kill him. Korea takes its baseball very seriously, y'know...

I know. He's the Man Without a Country now...hated in the US, hated in Korea...maybe Cuba'll take him in. LOL

Hehehe. Cuba has Tavarez, I don't think they need Kim.

I actually feel genuinely bad Byung-Hyun, though. I like the guy despite how much he screws up, and I feel so bad for him when he does, especially because of the way he reacts. It's obvious that he takes the sport very seriously and it hits him really hard when he fails.

I know...I feel the same way...

But he screws up so specatularly when he does screw up...

He blew some WS games in '01 for the D'Backs.. unfortunately not enough games. He's the only guy I've ever seen crawl into a ball on the mound and cry..

Well, yeah, letting down the Red Sox fan base a few times must be painful enough (at least the D-backs still won the W.S.)-now it was his whole freakin' COUNTRY! Seriously, he may as well just quit baseball now. :P

I don't know.. I think he should re-join the Sox :P

I think people might firebomb the front office or something...LOL

He did look like he was going to cry in Boston, too...

I hear you on Ichiro, he's irritating. That was funny when he kept being booed. I wish they had given us more views or counts, but it SEEMED like a lot more Korean fans there.

I was wondering, too, were these actual visitors from Korea and Japan?? I'm guessing they were just Japanese or Korean Americans from the Southern Cal area...

P.S. Does this mean you're rooting for Cuba too? :) As you can see from my lj, I kinda switched my allegiance from the Dominican to them...the Dominicans had too much going for them, were too much expected to win, and I have this thing for the scrappy underdog.

I don't know who I'm rooting for. I mean, it's almost exactly like the World Series last year. I didn't want to root for the White Sox, since they took us out, but I really haven't got any vested interest in the National League at all, but Houston's kind of a charismatic underdog...

Except change "White Sox" to "Japan," "National League" to "Pool 2" and "Houston" to "Cuba" and yeah...there's the same ambivalence I had in October.

Some of them may have been; but yeah, most of them probably live in So. Cal.

We kinda figured a lot of the Koreans down here are probably people who just learned a few words or phrases from their grandmothers, something like that. ;-)

But the crowd was filled with a ton of Korean supporters. After the rain delay, it seemed like the entire lower bowl of seats except for the area around the Japanese dugout was ALL Korean.

Oh no, there were people there from Korea just to see the games. I had family in that crowd...

Dude Ichiro was running like a son of a bitch on Korea's pitchers. That's like him giving the finger to Korea. I love it.

You kill me. I love you.