Korea Beats US in World Baseball Classic

Team Korea has handed the US baseball team a thumping in the World Baseball Classic:

Power hitting and steady pitching from Korea’s national baseball team lead a stunning 7-3 triumph over favored Team USA on Monday in Anaheim, Calif.

Lee Seung-yeop of South Korea belted the first inning solo homer off Dontrelle Willis, the National League’s pitcher with the most victories last season. “Big Choi’’ Choi Hee-seop, who plays for the Los Angeles Dodgers, followed with a fourth inning three-run homer against the Americans. Reliever Koo Dae-sung threw scoreless 3 innings.

Go over to Robert’s site for many great comments about the game, but the consensus is that the US team sucks and the Korean team deserved to win. Robert declares a day of national shame but I don’t really see anything to be ashamed about. The US team is a bunch of overpayed premadonas that got beat by a better Korean team. End of story. It is not the end of the story for the Korean media as Nomad pointed out in this posting.

These “all-star” (I use the term loosely) teams used now in international competitions are not working for the United States. Basketball, Hockey, and now Baseball all-star teams are failing because of these big money players not showing any team work, not playing as hard as they should, and just the fact they don’t appear to really care if they win or lose because they got a long season ahead of them and millions of dollars at stake if they get hurt before the season thus they do not give maxiumum effort.

Compare this to the Korean team that demonstrated lots of teamwork and was going all out and playing hard to beat the US and deserved to win.

Maybe it is time for the US to go back to amateur athletes who actually care about winning the game as much as Lee Seung-yeop, Park Chan-ho, and company displayed against the US.