Korea 1, Japan 0

I'd like to say that this was a brilliantly played, tense battle, but that wouldn't really be true. This game was a brilliantly played, tense battle. Last night was perhaps the sloppiest 1-0 game I've ever seen.

Now the both Japan and Korea were throwing some leather last night, but when the winning side makes 5(5!) baserunning errors you can't say it's a well-played game. During the game against China, the Korean third base coach actually tried to tackle a runner to stop him from advancing. He missed the tackle and the runner was out by 15 feet. Last night, he stopped trying to tackle runners. I got the impression that he realized his players were going to be overaggressive and get into all kinds of wacky situations.

The Korean baserunning was offset by their brilliance on the mound. Bong Jung-geun pitched his guts out. He threw 5 1/3 innings of 3-hit baseball. He struck out 2 and it seemed like everything was a groundball to the left side. Lim Chang-yong tossed 1 2/3 innings of relief to nail down the save. His stuff was absolutely electric.

Kim Tae-gyun provided all the offense Korea would need when he drilled an RBI single down the third base line in the 4th inning.

Aaron at the EWC gave last nights' game a great write up and I agree with a lot of his observations. Where is Kang Min-ho? Did he sleep with Kim In-sik's daughter or something? I thought we might see Park Kyeong-won for Kim Kwang-hyeon's start(they're battery mates with SK), but to have him play the entire series is ridiculous.

The Korean team gets to rest for a week and hang out in San Diego waited the result from Group B. I've got to think Ryu Hyeon-jin is going to open the 2nd round. It will be interesting to see who Kim pegs as the #2 starter. Could it be Bong again?