With Korea’s loss to Japan in the World Baseball Classic the conspiracy theories are already beginning and most of them have to do with why Korea gets eliminated after only one loss:
Some of the players were still not content and the reasons for that included a weird bracket of the tournament, where the top two teams in the second round group meet again in the semifinals.
“We aimed to go to the semifinals and made it in the end. I’m satisfied. We’ve already won twice so I don’t think we lost to Japan,” Lee Seung-yeop of South Korea said. “We did our best but I’m afraid there has been something not proper about the rules in the event, as long as we went 6-1 and still have to be eliminated.”
This has been a common sentiment not only with players but also with Korean fans:
“It is a pity to lose the game, but I highly recognize the national team’s efforts. It is also regretful that we could not gain a good result despite fine plays because we had to fight the Japanese team three times due to the U.S.’ abnormal game schedules,’’ Park Sung-soo, 31-year-old Seoul citizen, said.
It is called single elimination people. Your pool play record means nothing when in a single elimination game. Koreans should know this from watching the World Cup every 4 years where the same system is used. It is not a black helicopter US CIA conspiracy to hold back Korea.
I will use an NFL example to better make my point. You do not see the Indianapolis Colts complaining about losing to the Pittsburgh Steelers in the NFL Playoffs even though they had a better season record and beat Pittsburgh during the season? The fact is that it was single elimination and they get beat, that simple.
Some people think the semi-finals should have been a three game series, but all the teams that entered the WBC new the format and rules and signed up for it anyway. I don’t think it is proper to complain about the rules and format publicly afterwords after you voluntarily signed up to play in the tournament to begin with.
The Korean team had a great run and have a lot to be proud of. I expect the WBC will make some format changes in 4 years, but the black helicopter CIA conspiracy theories have got to go.
Of course head over to the Marmot’s Hole to hear all the latest conspiracy theories.
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