Category Archives: International

Headlines from around the Continuum: October 21, 2014

Posted on by
Reply

A sampling of baseball-related headlines from the Newseum, with the occasional note from me on what they are talking about:

(Note that I try to copy the style of the paper as well, hence why some are in ALL CAPS while others aren’t. Also, I ignored extremely basic-and extremely common- headlines like “World Series Preview” or “Game tonight”. I’ll occasionally make an exception for the team’s “home” newspapers)

Headline: World Series starts tonight!

San Francisco Chronicle: Tight-knit pitchers give Giants a Southern accent

San Francisco Examiner: Winning Formula: Giants tap red-hot ‘MadBum’ for Game 1

Kansas City Star: KC: A BASEBALL TOWN

TimesDaily (Florence, AL): SHOALS IN THE SERIES (Sergio Romo and Josh Willingham, both in the World Series, had played for the Florence-based University of North Alabama in the past)

Bakersfield Californian: DYNASTY VS. DESTINY

Merced (CA) Sun-Star: Giants-sized gear purchases (On the demand for San Francisco Giants gear)

Modesto Bee: S.F. Fans getting geared up (On Modesto-area Giants fans)

Oakland Tribune: Giants’ toughness starts at the top (On Brian Sabean, Giants GM)

The Tribune (San Luis Obispo, CA): VETERAN BULLPEN EYES THIRD RING

Orange County Register: WILD-CARD WORLD SERIES

South Florida Sun-Sentinel: THEY’VE HIT IT BIG (On Eric Hosmer and Michael Morse, who played high school ball in Broward County, FL)

Des Moines Register: Loyals to the crown (on Iowa fans of the Royals)

News-Gazette (Champaign, IL): Series business (I had to include this simply because of the bad pun)

Redeye (Chicago, IL): LOVABLE LONGSHOTS (On the Royals- there’s a picture of a container of barbecue sauce with them on it)

Lawrence (KS) Journal-World: ROYAL FEVER

Ottawa (KS) Herald: WORLD APART (on how a Ottawa native’s brother lives in San Francisco, leading to the two of them rooting for different teams in the World Series)

Wichita Eagle: Royals fans in Wichita are living a dream

Joplin (MO) Globe: Royal Rhythm (On how Missouri Southern’s drumline will be performing in Kansas City for World Series festivities) Also on the front page: LONG WAIT ENDS TODAY

News-Leader (Springfield, MO): Hopping on Royals bandwagon?

McDowell (County, NC) News: Down to Earth in the World Series (on Greg Holland, who went to High School in McDowell County, NC.)

Argus Leader (Sioux Falls, SD): MOST UNLIKELY WORLD SERIES

Yankton (SD) Daily Press: SERIOUS SERIES (on local fans of Royals and Giants)

Fort Worth Star-Telegram: Former TCU ace could be factor as World Series opens tonight (The ace is Brandon Finnegan)

USA Today: Royal underdogs vs. Giant legacy

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: NED YOST DOESN’T CARE WHAT YOU THINK

Hamilton (Canada) Spectator: 2014 WORLD SERIES: The party crashers vs. the old pros

Vanguardia (Saltillo, Mexico): BUSCAN HACER HISTORIA! (“Looking to make history!”)

El Nacional (Caracas, Venezuela): Siete venezolanos en play (Seven Venezuelans Play)

 

 

Check back throughout the World Series for more headlines!

 

 

 

Quick Aside/Update on the Curse of the Colonel

Aside

The one team standing between the Hanshin Tigers and the end of the Curse of the Colonel will be the Softbank Hawks, who won the Pacific League title earlier today (Eastern Time)/last night (Japan Time).

Continuum Baseball Rankings Update (Oct. 20, 2014): Asian Games moves some stuff around, but nothing drastic

Posted on by
Reply

The Asian Games occurred late last month. Seven of the eight teams had a talent-level good enough to have it count for them in the Continuum Rankings (Korea, for example, sent KBO players, while Taipei sent players from the Affiliated Minors. The one team that didn’t qualify for Continuum Rankings was Japan, which sent amateurs and semi-pros, which isn’t enough to count). Korea won.

Now, despite all of this, there wasn’t too much movement. While Taipei lost a small amount of points and Korea gained over 19 points, those weren’t enough to cause any changes in the top 10. Instead, there were minor changes down the board, with China and Germany flip-flopping, South Africa and Hong Kong doing the same, and Finland and Mongolia switching places down near the bottom.

Anyway, look below the jump for the full rankings.

 

Continue reading →

Is this the end of the Curse of the Colonel?

Posted on by
2

Okay, jump into your nearest Wayback Machine, DeLorean, TARDIS, or George Carlin-approved Phone Booth, and go to the year 1985, to the Kansai Region of Japan. The Osaka area, to be exact. The Hanshin Tigers have just beaten the Seibu Lions, 4 games to 2, to win the Japan Series. It’s the first time they’ve won the NPB championship, and the first time the team has been Japan’s champion since 1947, three years before the founding of NPB.

In celebration, fans of the Tigers* gathered near a local river, with fans shouting out the names of star players followed by people who resembled the player then jumping in. However, there was one problem: The team’s star player, Randy Bass, was not Japanese, but instead a bearded American named Randy Bass. With nobody around who resembled him, they instead grabbed a statue of Colonel Sanders from a nearby KFC and threw it in instead.

The following year, they fell to third in the Central League. The year after that, they were last. The year after that, they were last again. In fact, they would prove to generally be asecond-division team every year until 2003. In that time, an explanation was come up with- it was a curse. A curse from Colonel Sanders.

Visits to the Japan Series in 2003 and 2005 ended in defeat, and four playoff appearances since had seen them go out in the first stage of the “Climax Series” (the first stage of the “Climax Series” is roughly analogous to the LDS round of MLB, although the fact it pits the 2nd and 3rd best teams in each league make it a bit similar to the Wild Card Play-In).

But then, this year, they got through the first stage of the Climax Series (defeating Hiroshima) and got to Stage 2 against their rivals, the Yomiuri Giants. Now, Stage 2 of the Climax Series is a weird thing to American eyes. While it essentially is a LCS round, it’s a best-of-6. Yes, you read that right: best-of-six. The team with the better record/home field gets a 1-game advantage to start the series, meaning that they only need to win 3 games, while the other team needs to win 4.

The Giants are winners of 35 Central League titles and 22 Japan Series titles in their history. When you consider that the modern NPB was founded in 1950, you can see why they are called the “Yankees of Japan”. And this year, they again had great success, winning the Central League by 7 games over Hiroshima and Hanshin and racking up the best record in Japanese baseball.

But, what do you know? The Tigers swept them 4-straight, winning game four by a 8-4 score, with home runs by Matt Murton, Tsuyoshi Nishioka and Kosuke Fukudome and a late 2-run double by Mauro Gomez. You can see highlights here.

Their fans celebrated, of course, by jumping into the river:

So, now, the Tigers head to the Japan Series. They will face either Soft Bank or Nippon Ham. Will they win? I don’t know. But there is something to be noted here. Something that is different from the last few post-curse times they reached the Japan Series.

You see, a few years ago, a good chunk of the Colonel Sanders statue was found. This will be the Tigers’ first appearance in the Japanese Series since the Colonel was recovered. And so, it won’t be long until the world learns… whether the Colonel’s Curse lives.

Stay tuned.

 

*You may remember the Hanshin Tigers from my discussion of a Pokemon baseball episode.

Plenty of Movement in Sept. 24’s post-European Championship Continuum Baseball Rankings

Posted on by
Reply

The European Baseball Championships are over, and were won by the Netherlands. So it’s time for a new round of the Continuum Baseball Rankings! Go to that link for an explanation about them.

This takes into account both the overall results of the tournament as well as head-to-head matchups during it.

Anyway, there was plenty of movement in the rankings because of the tournament. The Dutch, for example, are once again in fifth place, overtaking Taiwan/Taipei. The biggest jump was made by the Belgians, however, who as I predicted earlier have begun to move up the ladder, jumping from 55 to 50. The biggest drop came for Great Britain, which went from 24th to 27th as a result of their play at the European Championships.

It won’t be too long before yet another update of the Rankings, as the Asian Games baseball competition is going on right now- although it should be noted that that will only take into account results for teams that sent professional players or their closest national equivalent.

 

Go below the jump to see the rankings:

Continue reading →

Pre-Euro contests make Dutch fall to 6th in the Continuum Baseball Rankings

Posted on by
Reply

Due to one (!) surprising loss to France in the run-up to the European Championships (which are going on now), the Dutch dropped enough points where they are now in sixth in the Continuum Baseball Rankings. No other teams made any big changes, although Belgium and Sweden have entered near the bottom. While they are definitely not as low in baseball talent as their ranking indicates, it is custom to have new entrants enter based on how forward or back in the IBAF rankings they are of the lowest rated team in the Continuum Rankings. It’s likely they will both be moving up as time goes on.

The next rankings update will come at the end of the European Championships, which are going on right now. Go below the jump to see the full rankings:

Continue reading →

Some stuff at the bottom in the August 2, 2014 Continuum Baseball Rankings

Posted on by
Reply

It’s been awhile, but it’s time to update the Continuum Baseball Rankings! The C-Levels of the European Championships took place recently, and since it included previously-included Continuum Rankings teams like Israel, Ireland and Slovenia and involved senior teams (i.e. the best players they could round up given circumstances), it counts in the Rankings! Of course, the best players that these teams could get aren’t necessarily that great (the best rosters in this tournament would probably be beaten by fairly good D3 college teams)- Israel didn’t have Minor League ringers this time around like in the WBC Qualifiers, for example. But still, it counts, and Israel won it.

So, the movements in this installment (all at the bottom of the rankings, more or less):

  • Slovenia and Ireland swapped places, with Slovenia (which finished 2nd in the tournament) taking 47th while Ireland (4th) fell to 48.
  • Romania entered the rankings at 49, pushing Mongolia (inactive) back to 50.
  • Finland, Latvia, Hungary and Norway made their Rankings debut, being 51, 52, 53, and 54, respectively. Norway is now the lowest-rated team in the Rankings, and would, if they were to face a Senior USA team (which could mean anything from Indy Leaguers all the way up to MLB-filled WBC teams), lose over 99.39% of the time.

 

Lastly, a note about methodology: To make updates a bit more active, I am considering making it so that the Rankings cover everything 18 and over. This would bring in results by college teams and the like. Such a change won’t be made until 2015, but it’s something to note.

 

Anyway, current rankings are after the jump:

Continue reading →

Future Possibilities for International Games

Posted on by
1

At the start of the season, regular season games were held in Sydney, Australia.* Whether you like it or not, it was not the first and won’t be the last time that MLB opened overseas. But, where will MLB go next? Here’s an overview of possibilities:

 

* This was partly written immediately following those games, but fell by the wayside until now, so here it is.

A Return to the Tokyo Dome

Used under Creative Commons license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en), taken by “DX Broadrec”.

Location: Tokyo, Japan

Baseball Pedigree: Has hosted baseball since it opened in 1988, home of the Yomiuri Giants, hosted WBC games in 2006, 2009 and 2013, hosted MLB season-opener games in 2000, 2004, 2008 and 2012. Japan is one of the preeminent baseball nations on Earth and host to the world’s 2nd most prominent baseball league.

Capacity: Between 42,000 and 55,000 (depending on configuration)

Pros: Japan is baseball-mad, has shown it can pack the stadium for MLB games, and the Tokyo Dome is highly-familiar to MLB officials and some players thanks to it’s many previous MLB-related events. Being a dome makes weather considerations non-existent, and Tokyo’s status as one of the world’s greatest cities allows for plenty for players to do when not playing.

Cons: It’s been done before several times, it’s a type of stadium that has been phased out of MLB, and, while this isn’t much of a factor that MLB cares about much, there is the time difference issue, with night games in Tokyo being early morning games in the Eastern USA and very, very, very early morning games in the western part of the USA.

Likelihood of return: It’s inevitable that MLB will return to Japan again sometime in the future, the question is whether the Tokyo Dome is the place it will happen. More-than-likely yes, but I’ll be looking at other possible Japanese sites later on.

(HIT THE JUMP FOR THE REST OF THIS ARTICLE)

Continue reading →

BIZARRE BASEBALL CULTURE: “Mr. Go” is about a GORILLA PLAYING BASEBALL IN KOREA

Posted on by
32

In Bizarre Baseball Culture, I take a look at some of the more unusual places where baseball has reared it’s head in pop culture and fiction.

Oh boy.

I have covered many strange things on Bizarre Baseball Culture over time. There was the story about baseball in 2044, there was the Pokémon episode, the comic where the hero basically uses PEDs, the comic where Billy The Marlin and Spider-Man had to save Jeff Conine from Doctor Doom, and, of course, all of those “Ultimate Sports Force” comics. But perhaps none can compare to the 2013 Korean/Chinese epic that is… Mr. Go. 

Yes, Mr. Go. A film much beloved by people throughout the baseball internet for the sheer curiosity factor of those blog posts at places like Big League Stew last year, but rarely actually seen by it. I, however, was able to procure a copy of the film, in the form of a DVD from Hong Kong, acquired from a Canadian seller on eBay. All for you, the readership of the Baseball Continuum (and anybody who found this link).

So, buckle up, because below the jump, we dive deep on Mr. Go. Prepare yourself, because gorilla baseball, MLB cameos, banana-shaped thunderstix, pizza commercials, a bullpen-cart chase and other madness awaits you:

Continue reading →

LINK WEEK: Baseball Round The World

Posted on by
Reply

This is LINK WEEK, and until Saturday, everyday will add a new link. Today’s link is Baseball Round The World, the personal blog of former big-leaguer Mike Ekstrom, who now is playing in Italy but who has also played in Mexico, Australia, and in the Asia Series in Taiwan. The site mixes his own personal experiences with conversations with people involved in baseball overseas, as well as plenty of photos.

A nice site to check out.