Korea Wins Gold! Matt comes back from vacation!

I arrived in Colorful Daegu yesterday. Public schools were on their winter break and I headed home to Chicago for two weeks of R & R at my family's fortified compound in Arlington Heights, IL. I caught 3 White Sox games(All W's!!!), suffered a terrible sunburn on my legs and took roadtrips to Busch Stadium in St. Louis(world class facility) and Miller Park in Milwaukee(an MLB class facility). Only the Brew Crew disappointed with an loss.

It was Happy Days night in Milwaukee with a reunion of all the living cast members. The city of Milwaukee dedicated a statue of The Fonz in downtown Milwaukee. Chicago has its war heroes and great works of art, Milwaukee gets The Fonz. That's about right. The big highlight from the St. Louis game was my dad on the jumbotron. Before the game, a camera crew interviewed us for a jumbotron video after the 5th inning. The question was, "What Olympic event would you like to participate in?" I said, "baseball." My dad wasn't quite as sure as me, so I suggested synchronized swimming and he went along with it. The ending was killer, a freeze frame of my dad giving an "I'm going for your throat" smile and then having his face imposed on a swimmer's body.

I guess the Korean baseball team won some games....or something? Seriously, congratulations to the Korean Baseball team, they deserved it. Also, what the heck happened to the Taiwanese team? I thought those guys were supposed to be really talented. I guess the majority of the talent has left the island.

The Joongang Ilbo also covered the events in Beijing. Hopefully this will bring a renewed interest to the game here in Korea. While this is a great victory for the country, I'm not reading anything into this for the WBC. Korea will likely send the same team there that they sent to Beijing. I'm not sure if these guys are good enough to compete with the Pujols, Suzukis and Brauns of the world.

I want to do a full writeup for each game, but even getting a boxscore in the US was difficult. That and, well, I was on vacation. I get the impression that NBC did their best to ignore baseball during the Olympics. Given the quality of the teams sent by Japan and the USA, I'm not surprised.

The KBO season starts back up tomorrow. I'm actually looking forward to some of these games. Who knows, my beloved Samsung Lions might actually claw their way into contention again. They're only 1/2 game behind Lotte for the 4th playoff spot...

Also, Happy Birthday to the East Windup Chronicle. I can't believe the EWC is only one year old.