Asia Series:
The NPB continued its mastery of the Asia Series as the Seibu Lions defeated the President Lions in yet another close ball game. BC has a recap of the GW run that was scored in the bottom of the 9th inning off of Wei-Lun Pan. Seibu ace Hideaki Wakui was as advertised, K'ing 10 P. Lions in 6.2 IP (4 H, 3 BB's). P. Lions starter Giancarlo Alvarado was outstanding as well, throwing 6 shutout innings and giving up only 4 hits (1 K, 0 BB's).
Props to the P. Lions for an outstanding year and congrats to the Seibu Lions on the championship (minus a few key players, I might add).
Box (in Japanese)
2 comments:
What a gallant effort! I've always maintained that the gap between the best professional teams will be smaller than the gap between the national teams. Although the bigger baseball countries have more stars, they are spread out over more teams. Don't be surprised to see the Taiwanese champion challenge for the Konami Cup again in the coming years particularly after CPBL's contraction (assuming that this event continues, of course).
Any idea whether the Asian Series will ever be rotated to Taiwan or Korea? Given this year's paltry attendance, it's hard to believe that Taiwan can't do better.
Good point about attendance and rotating the games. There were really two reasons for having Japan host the games, the sponsor, Konami, wishes to focus its sponsorship on the Japanese market, and Tokyo Dome can hold greatly more people than all but Busan Stadium in Korea (to the best of my knowledge - please correct me if I'm wrong).
The first point will be gone next season as Konami's sponsorship is up and it's rumored that they will not renew for next year.
Judging from the turn out this year, it's really hard to hold the second point too high. From listening to others, though, baseball in Korea in November would be brutally cold, as all the stadiums are out doors and temperatures are at least 10 degrees C colder than Tokyo. But I understand that Taiwan rather nice temperature-wise this time of year.
There was a third argument, that the Seibu Lions simply aren't an attractive enough team to bring in many Pro Yakyu fans. Had the Giants, Tigers, or even Chiba Lotte Marines gone, the crowds would have probably been better. Even Chunichi pulled in more for the Japan games last year.
Still, if Taiwan can produce the sponsorship, I seen no reason for the games not to head south.
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