I hardly heard of it in Britain, but Baseball’s pretty popular here in Japan, going back to 1872. The BBC hardly mention it of course: following “Sport” to “Other Sport” to “Baseball” you eventually end up with a link to the World Baseball Classic home page, where right now you’ll find that the final is in progress with Japan vs. Korea. These are old rivals – amazingly enough, under the complicated “double elimination” rules of the WBC, this makes the fifth game between them! They’ve had to knock out some pretty powerful other countries on the way – Cuba, Venezuela… not to mention America, but now we’ve got two great teams facing each other, and a great game.
Baseball’s not a bad sport to watch, although football’s up there too, and here we’ve got a worthy final – equal scores at the 9th innings and now into extra time! Japan have just put in two more runs so now it’s down to the young pitching star Darvish (his dad’s Iranian) to hold down the Koreans, who are just as determined to win of course…
DONE IT! Japan have won the World Baseball Classic for the second time in a row.
Now for the High School baseball, which will be on the radio for the Spring, then Summer, tournaments. I get tired of it after a month or so, to be honest, but T. loves it.
asazuke 