Category: Sports Related

The KBO and ESPN have finally struck a deal to air Korean baseball games, however neither side is disclosing what the financial terms of this arrangement are:

The U.S. sports cable giant ESPN will broadcast South Korean baseball games to its American audience, starting with the first day of the season on Tuesday.

The Korea Baseball Organization (KBO) announced Monday that ESPN has struck a deal with Eclat, the Korean company with international distribution rights to KBO games. ESPN will air one game per day and six games per week, with an opening day game between the Samsung Lions and the NC Dinos leading things off. The game is set to begin at 2 p.m. Tuesday Korean time, or 1 a.m. Tuesday Eastern Standard Time (EST).

The KBO said ESPN will also offer KBO highlights.

In its own press release, ESPN said it will become “the exclusive English-language home” for live KBO games, and the deal covers the postseason and the Korean Series, the best-of-seven championship final here. Games will mostly air on ESPN2 and on the ESPN APP.

ESPN will announce its game selections on a week-to-week basis. It added that its play-by-play voices, analysts and reporters will provide commentary in English, remotely, from their home studios. The group will include Karl Ravech, Jon Sciambi, Eduardo Perez, Jessica Mendoza and Kyle Peterson.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but it will be interesting to see how American fans take to watching Korean baseball. It is too bad the stadiums will not have fans because it would be interesting to get American reactions to Korean baseball fans.

So who would be excited to watch some South Korean baseball games on ESPN?:

U.S. sports media giant ESPN was seeking free rights to broadcast South Korean professional baseball games, leading to a stalemate in its negotiations with its counterpart in Seoul, informed sources told Yonhap News Agency on Thursday.

According to sources with knowledge of the talks, ESPN wanted to acquire rights to Korea Baseball Organization (KBO) games for free from Eclat, which owns international rights to KBO games.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but clearly ESPN is desperate and I don’t blame the KBO for playing hardball on them. If they want programming they should pay for it.

Here is what LeBron James had to say about the NBA’s China problem:

“I think when we talk about the political side, I think it’s a very delicate situation, a very sensitive situation,” James said. “Me personally … when I speak about something, I speak about something I’m very knowledgable about, something that hits home for me, something I’m very passionate about. I felt like with this particular situation, there was something not only was I not informed enough about. I just felt like it was something that not only myself or my teammates or our organization had enough information to even talk about it at that point in time, and we still feel the same way.”

Yahoo Sports

You can read more at the link, but James also took a shot at Houston Rockets GM Daryl Morey who started NBA’s China problem with a Tweet supporting protesters in Hong Kong by James stating Morey “wasn’t educated” and only “thinking about himself”.

What isn’t there not to know other than the Chinese government is beating down pro-Democracy and human rights demonstrators in Hong Kong? How is showing support for the protesters a sign of only thinking about one’s self? Keep all this in mind the next time you hear professional athletes talk about social justice causes.

I just don’t understand how someone could win a major volleyball match to qualify for the Olympics and the first thing to come to mind is to make the slant eye gesture?:

The South Korean national volleyball federation said Wednesday it will lodge a complaint against a Russian women’s team coach for his racist gesture following a recent match.

Russia defeated South Korea 3-2 (21-25, 20-25, 25-22, 25-16, 15-11) in the final Group E match of the FIVB Women’s Volleyball Intercontinental Olympic Qualification Tournament at DS Yantarny in Kaliningrad, Russia, on Sunday (local time). With that victory, Russia earned direct qualification for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. In post-match celebration, Sergio Busato, an Italian-born assistant coach for Russia, was photographed making the slant-eye, racist gesture.

Russian website Sport 24 carried a photo of Busato with his two index fingers on his eyes. The accompanying blurb simply said the coach “did not hide his positive emotions” and showed a gesture depicting narrow eyes, with no mention of the gesture’s implications.

FIFA bans this and other discriminatory gestures under its disciplinary code and once sanctioned Colombian midfielder Edwin Cardona, who resorted to the act in a friendly against South Korea in November 2017. But FIVB, the international volleyball federation, isn’t known to have specific rules against racist or discriminatory acts.The South Korean national volleyball federation said Wednesday it will lodge a complaint against a Russian women’s team coach for his racist gesture following a recent match.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

It looks like the South Korean media is trying to sensationalize an accidental collision during a figure skating competition into an anti-American incident:

A South Korean sports agency is claiming an American figure skater intentionally injured its client Lim Eun-soo with a skate blade in a collision during the ongoing world championships.
According to All That Sports, Lim sustained a cut to her calf Wednesday when Mariah Bell struck Lim’s leg with her skate during their warmup prior to the ladies’ short program at the International Skating Union (ISU) World Figure Skating Championships in Saitama, Japan.

Lim was immediately treated for her injury. She was 30th among 40 skaters to take the ice and had the cut on her leg taped before performing her program.
In her first senior world championships, Lim, 16, set a personal high with 72.91 points to rank fifth, while Bell, 22, scored 71.26 points to place sixth.
An All That Sports official who witnessed the collision said there was enough ground to believe Bell’s act was premeditated, since Lim was skating close to the walls so as not to interfere with others, and Bell came from behind the South Korean to make contact.

Yonhap

The only problem with the South Korean sports agency’s claim is that it is not true:

he agency that represents Lim, All That Sports, told Agence France-Press that Bell has been “bullying Lim for months,” and once the incident occurred, asked the South Korean federation to lodge a formal complaint with the International Skating Union, the worldwide federation for the sport. As one of Lim’s agents told Yonhap News, Bell was waiting her turn to rehearse her program when she “suddenly kicked and stabbed Lim’s calf with her skate blades.”

Sensational? Yes. True? No.
Bell was the one who was rehearsing her short program, not Lim, which means Bell had the right of way on the ice and it was Lim’s job to get out of her way. Videotape shot from the stands shows Bell skating backwards at a relatively rapid pace near the boards with Lim in her path. At that point, Bell would not have been able to see Lim — but Lim had the responsibility to see Bell and move out of the way.

This is protocol for every skater at every competition, where six skaters share the ice on practice sessions and warmups.
What’s more, because Lim trains with Bell, she certainly should know Bell’s short program after seeing it on training sessions for months. All skaters get to know what their training partners and competitors are doing, including where they are headed and where their jumps, spins and other moves are placed on the ice.

As Bell went by Lim, she started to turn to go forward, and apparently her skate blade slightly cut Lim’s leg. Both skaters were able to compete in the short program later in the day, and both did very well, with Lim finishing fifth with a personal-best score and Bell sixth. 
This is not the first time there has been a collision involving two skaters in a competition. In fact, it would be unusual for an event like the worlds or Olympics to go by without a practice collision. The same day as the Bell-Lim scrap, there was a much more spectacular crash: French pairs skater Vanessa James was skating backwards when she and Italy’s Matteo Guarise slammed into each other at full speed during the warmup before the pairs competition.

As conspiracy theories spread across the internet, the ISU put out a statement saying there was “no evidence” that Bell deliberately kicked Lim, and Arutunian told a Russian news agency the same thing, according to an internet translation.

USA Today

It appears to me that the Korean media may be trying to recreate another Apollo Anton Ohno like controversy that led to him being public enemy #1 and increased anti-Americanism in South Korea. However, this was not the Olympics and no gold medal was on the line thus I expect this will be quickly forgotten.

However, continue to expect every little incident that can remotely be twisted for anti-Americanism to be published hoping something will eventually stick.

The Olympics continue to prove to be extremely wasteful and Pyeongchang is the latest example:

Gangwon Province is mired in massive debts after hosting the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang earlier this year.

The mountainous province with a population of 1.5 million had to host the biggest Winter Olympics so far, and six months on conflict with locals and unpaid wages continue to plague the local government, while the astronomically expensive venues sit empty.

The biggest headache is what to do with the speed skating rink, ice hockey center and Alpensia Sliding Center that have proved a bottomless pit of maintenance costs.

The province has to fork out W20.3 billion until 2022 just to keep the facilities running, but nobody knows what will happen afterwards (US$1=W1,109). Gangwon Province has asked the National Assembly to have the central government take on 75 percent of the upkeep costs, but the central government refused since it could set a bad precedent for allocating state funds.

The alpine skiing venue in Jeongseon, which was built on a 101-hectare piece of land owned by the Korea Forest Service, faces demolition. The government footed 75 percent of the W203.4 billion cost of building it and Gangwon Province the rest. A precondition was to return the land to the government after the Winter Olympics, but now locals want to keep it, hoping that the facility can generate income for the remote province.

Environmentalists and the KFS insist it must be demolished and the forest restored.  [Chosun Ilbo]

You can read more at the link.

I am sure it was sweet to beat Japan in the Asian Cup Finals, but the fact they don’t have to do their mandatory military service is probably the most satisfying part of this win for the players:

South Korea defeated Japan 2-1 to defend the men’s football title at the Asian Games in Indonesia.

In the final match at Pakansari Stadium in Cibinong on Saturday, the men’s football team finished the 90-minute main game in a scoreless draw.

During extra time, Lee Seung-woo scored the first goal and Hwang Hee-chan added another minutes later.

South Korea successfully defended its Asiad title following their victory at Incheon 2014 and came to hold the most Asiad titles in men’s football with five.

The victory also gave the 20 Taegeuk Warriors, including captain Son Heung-min, exemption from mandatory military service that usually takes about two years.  [KBS World Radio]

Here is another example of free agency coming to international sports:

South Korea’s U.S. born basketball player, Ricardo Ratliffe, on Thursday rued a lack of team effort in his side’s disappointing loss against Iran at the 18th Asian Games.

South Korea lost its title defense bid after losing to Iran 80-68 in the men’s basketball semifinal match at the 18th Asian Games at Gelora Bung Karno (GBK) Istora arena in Jakarta.

Ratliffe, whose Korean name is Ra Gun-ah, was the only South Korean player who stood up against Iranians. He had a game-high 37 points and 12 rebounds, but his superb performance wasn’t enough to see South Korea through to the final.

“We just played terrible,” Ratliffe said of his team’s performance. “We didn’t play well together. That’s all.”  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link.