Korea in Baseball Opener

With runners on second and third with no outs, Chang struck out Cody Decker but then walked Ryan Lavarnway and Tyler Krieger to force in a run.

It’s a still young tournament.

“One of the main goals of the tournament is to grow baseball around the world, and by allowing these countries that maybe don’t have the great amount of talent, by allowing these guidelines and entrance rules, you allow countries like Israel, where baseball is still growing”. It was created as a response to the International Olympic Committee’s decision to remove baseball as an Olympic Sport in 2005. – This point sort of ties in with reason number 2, but the WBC is essential for helping to grow awareness about baseball and get fans all across the globe interested in the game. South Korea tied the game on Geonchang Seo’s RBI single in the fifth. It has not taken an easy path to its first WBC.

The Israeli team, mostly composed of American Jews, has been the butt of many jokes about the world baseball tournament. Teams play three games in pool play, and the two with the best record advance to the semifinals in Tokyo. As such, both teams feature a slew of high-quality players. This entitles Israel to have non-Israeli citizens of Jewish heritage play for the team, since the Law of Return allows anyone with one Jewish grandparent or anyone married to a Jew to ask for Israeli citizenship.

It was a tough loss for South Korea, who reached the semi-finals and finals in the first two editions (2006, 2009) of the WBC and were playing in front of a noisy crowd of more than 15,000 at Gocheok Sky Dome.

Pool B has the host Japanese with the roster sans Houston’s Nori Aoki stocked exclusively from their NPB organization as they look for their third WBC crown.

Pool C may be the “Group of Death” in this Classic, with all four teams holding plenty of Major League Baseball talent: the host United States, Canada, Colombia, and the reigning champion Dominicans. The championship round will take place in Los Angeles on March 20-22.

Though teams like the Dominican Republic, Japan and United States of America are expected to go far, Cinderella stories do happen. South Korea’s starting pitcher, Won-Jun Chang, didn’t pitch particularly well, but his breaking ball was very hard to pick up for Israel batters, however he was wild and did walk three in the four innings he pitched. Could they go all the way?