Online Sports Entertainment Network (OSEN) has provided a little bulletin board material for the Korean team ahead of the World Baseball Classic. Philadelphia Daily News columnist Bill Conlin, commenting on the Korean, Taiwanese, Chinese and Australian teams, said that while the Korean team is the strongest of the four (well, OSEN said he said so; reading the piece, I’m not so sure he did), they ranked no more than a "strong Double A" by U.S. minor league standards.
Conlin also had fun pointing to the prevalence of the family names Kim, Lee and Park on the Koreans’ 60-man roster. And while he was at it, he poked fun at the names of the teams of the Taiwanese pro baseball league.
OSEN pointed out, however, that both Chu Shin-su, who was a Triple A batsman in the Mariner organization, and Double A 10-game winner Yu Je-guk of the Cubs organization didn’t make the Korean national team’s final 30-man roster. Accordingly, a "Double A" ranking might be selling the team a bit short, it said.
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One Comment
I clicked in, expecting to be offended by “Long Duck Dong” type jokes, but all the writer did was poke fun at the prevalance of certain surnames among the Taiwanese and Korean teams. An Asian writer might do the same if a North American team had three Johnsons or Smiths. In fact, a North American writer would probably take note of a North American team had several players sharing the same surname.