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Wednesday, June 02, 2004

What do Radio Sport in NZ, the AB trial and baseball have to do with each other ? 

Well not much really but I'm writing about them.

Fame and fortune will surely be coming our way after being mentioned on Radio Sport on Tuesday morning by 'Andy' from the Panda Sport website.

Thanks a lot for that. It bumped the hit counter up a bit. We were beginning to wonder whether it might stall and start going backwards causing some sort of violent explosion at zero.

On to sport however, I was only able to follow the All Black trial on the live update facility at tvnz.co.nz. That's what happens when you are 5,000 miles away of course. I wish somebody in NZ would provide internet access to games after they have been played like the NRL does free of charge. For those who don't know you can watch every NRL, Test match and State of Origin game for the last 3 and a half years on their website. All you need is a comp that can handle it.

How many folks went to the game? Anybody know? It's notoriously hard to get rugby crowd figures unless the authorities want you to know (gloat in other words about how big they are). I heard it was small but then who the hell would want to go to a game where you don't now who to cheer for and when the game will likely be scrappy and disjointed? Fortunately we will be facing weaker opposition than the Possible side during the year in test matches. [I've since read it was 20,000. Not too shabby if it was indeed accurate. I only hope the same people who count the crowds at Opera in the Park weren't doing it. 300,000 my skinny white arse! You couldn't fit that many on that area of ground if they were standing on each others shoulders!]

I'm stuck here watching Korean baseball at the moment. There are 8 pro teams and they are reasonably good. Although they are all owned by, and therefore of course named after large Korean corporations. We have LG and Doosan in Seoul, Samsung in Daegu, Hyundai in Suwon, SK Telecom in Incheon, Hanhwa in Daejeon, Kia in Gwangju and Lotte in Busan.

A few Koreans have gone on to make the Majors in the US though they seem to go from high school, get trained up in the US and then make it rather than go from the league here. I think there are about 6-8 this season though a few of them get demoted occasionally. They are generally pitchers because they don't have the hitting power to perform that task. Although Choi Hee Seop is making a good fist of things at defending champs the Florida Marlins this year who sit on top of the National League. He's a big boy, six foot five and 240 pounds. He's hit 11 home runs this season and is in 22nd place in the MLB, four behind leader Alex Pujol of the St Louis Cardinals.

I'd say the most famous feat performed by a Korean in the MLB though would still be Kim Byung-hyun being tanked into the bleachers a few times by the Yankees in the World Series in 2001. He was pitching relief when they held leads and after he gave up game tying doubles... Fortunately the team managed to hang in there and win in game seven. Here's a good article on it.

And here's what total sporting devastation looks like with 56,000 Yankee fans looking on in glee...


As a footnote he was traded to the Boston Redsox in 2003 and after blowing a save he was booed by his home crowd at the next game. He then pulled the finger to his own supporters. Muhahahaha. He's still with them though. I would have thought pulling the finger to anybody in Boston would result in a gun shot wound at the very least.

Oh and anybody want to make any crowd size predictions for the Warriors v Raiders this weekend?

I picked 7,992 a few weeks ago and I suppose I should stick to that. But you never know. Some people are fanatics and they'll never stay away and good on them. Also not having played at home for a few weeks might mean a fair few people are suffering withdrawl symptons like I am from my footie team that was relocated to another city at the start of the season. Boycott LG!!!

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