Baseball Schmaseball

Like I mentioned before in an older post, Korean sports on television only plays just enough of the game to show the parts that actually matter, such as when a team scores or there is a key strikeout to end the inning with bases loaded. It's pretty awesome. It's like the best parts of baseball (hits, runs, fights) without the worst parts of baseball (commercials, chewing, spitting, deciding, thinking, meditating).

I just watched the entire Korean baseball teams' Olympic route in Beijing on television in about an hour and a half. They played most every game and I was cheering for them the entire time. They were so awesome. I cried at the end when they ran into the field even though I already knew the outcome before I started watching.

The reason that kind of scene makes me cry is that I know how it feels to reach the goal that you've been fighting for. I know what it feels like to want something so bad that you think about it every single moment of every day, and every time you are outside running or swimming a lap or running up stairs or puking your guts out, you are doing it for this one goal in your mind that you are concentrated on. And when that goal becomes yours, it's an amazing feeling. Even if they lost I would still cry, because I've had that experience as well.

One thing that surprised me was that there were a lot of errors committed in the games I watched. More so than most baseball games that I've watched in the states. I wonder what it was, maybe it was the pressure of playing in the Olympics (the true World Series *cough cough*)?

I was also a little surprised the USA did so badly as well. We have the oldest history in baseball and we have superstars every year that we consider amazing and some of the top athletes year after year in general ability, yet we couldn't beat a bunch of small asian people. haha

Yeah, it makes me laugh.