Kreza23 comments

Blue Tiger - "(1.) The Japanese Media will be playing this and will flaunt their own arrogance to the rest of the world (particularly when it comes to baseball), writing stories that tell how "Samurai" Japan scripted their own path to the Championship Podium, giving little to no credit to Team Korea (who beat the Champs twice), nor any other team that played well or closely in matches and games with Team Japan (honest, I'd have liked to see Team Venezuela take on "Samurai" Japan)."

The media will enjoy this, but flaunt it to the rest of the world? How so? And I think a lot of Japantoday posters give the media here a lot of flack (and this doesn't necessarily mean you Blue Tiger), but the majority of times it's misinterpreted. I'm definitely not a fan of the media here, but there is a lot of bashing here from posters who understand maybe half of what is said on TV. And the commentators were full of praise of the Korean players today throughout the entire game.

"(2.) Is it just me, or does it seem like every time Japan plays a baseball match on the international stage, they seem to think it is their "right" to win, and anyone or anything that keeps them from winning is a fluke at best or a joke at worst? There just seems to be this expectation that, yes, Team Japan will win, and the opposition will roll-over and play doormat for them, and anyone or anything that doesn't gets criticized by not only the media, but dismissed by the J-Team's players."

I don't know if it's just you, but it isn't true. They don't hold back on showing love for their players, but I don't sense that expectation at all when they're playing top teams such as Korea, Cuba, or the US. In fact, against teams like the U.S., if anything, there's an inferiority complex. The oohs and aahhs when David Wright threw a guy out at first without taking a step were indicative of that. What exactly have you heard that tells you that the media feels it's Japan's right to win? They may expect to beat the lower tier teams, but against the good teams, I don't see any of the attitude you talk about.

And Jojima didn't have a hissy fit. He put his bat down and left it there. He was pissed off, and he showed it (very calmly). And he got thrown out of the game. Nothing more, nothing less. People argue calls in baseball all the time. That's not really much of an incident.

And have you ever seen a team in baseball win a championship and run right over to the opposition to shake hands? No, because that never happens. Everybody runs to the pitcher's mound to celebrate. That's baseball tradition. The turning of the back happened afterwards when the teams lined up on the baselines.

Japan is very aware that the Korean baseball team is good. They won't think that "they should dominate Asia," and they didn't believe that they'd "win it in a walk." I'm not sure what you expect them to do or say, but Japan won this tournament, but Korea put up a great show. I think you're really reading into things a little too much.

TheHambugler - What difference does it make if a player has a major injury in the WBC, rather than if they had one during a regular season game? I'm not sure a lot of owners would choose not to sign someone because they've played in the WBC before.

Congratulations Japan! Fantastic game! I'm absolutely exhausted from watching that marathon of a roller coaster.

some14some - "I will not say if poor umpiring helped Iwakuma but it did hurt Korean Batting also Japan could have decided much earlier (how many LOB?) instead of going into extra inning, in that sense it was boring game."

There were some questionable calls on both sides I thought, but I don't think there was any favoritism either way. But how could you call this game boring??? I think you were rooting for Korea, judging by your comments, but you found it boring that Japan left a lot of runners on base? You found it boring because it went in to extra innings? Did you find it boring seeing the momentum of the game go back and forth? Calling this game boring is just mind-boggling to me, unless you're not into baseball at all, at which point I would have to question why you watched in the first place.

throwinstones - How do you propose they promote it more? And to whom? To the other three countries? If so, how would you go about doing that? Don't most countries take care of promoting their own national teams?

"Again, though, you canNOT compare terrestrial TV in most Western countries with what it is here. As I said, in Canada, you cannot simply use a coaxial cable to connect your TV and get 8 or 9 channels. You get, without a paid subscription, ZERO channels, save perhaps for a very fuzzy UHF channel if your TV is old enough and you still have an antenna. Even the most basic cable package, however, in said country will get you up to 30 or more channels (haven't been there lately), and definitely sports and movie channels to boot."

You're right smithinjapan. But as you've pointed out, without paying for anything in Canada, you can watch basically nothing, while in Japan, you can pay nothing (this is of course if you've chosen not to pay for NHK) and still watch WBC games, albeit only games involving Japan, among a whole lot of other programming. Japanese TV offers you a lot more for free than Canadian TV does. Why the complaints?

The reality is, not everybody would be interested in watching a game between Taiwan and China, and if there aren't going to be a whole lot of viewers for that, why would any station decide to lose money broadcasting it? The solution to that of course, is offering it on cable channels, so that the provider would get something for their troubles.

smithinjapan - Your guesses couldn't be any further off. Japan dominated possession and Australia played for the draw. The Aussies hardly looked dangerous at any point of the match.

I also meant to say that despite all their bogus promises to 'get ugly', as though they had to 'reduce themselves to Australia's level'

Don't think that's what Shunsuke meant by playing ugly. I think he meant that they shouldn't look to score by stringing together a bunch of pretty passes, but rather to keep shooting and charge the goal for any misses by the keeper (which they didn't do). Why so defensive about that comment?

Australia should definitely get in there, and probably Japan, too, provided neither royally screw up against... haha... Qatar and Finland.

Considering these are the World Cup Qualifiers for the AFC, I don't see what Finland has to do with anything. The match they played with Japan was a friendly.