今日のロスアンゼルスタイムスの記事で、前回のWBCで旗をマウンドに立てたチョンのピッチャーが、日本に侵略されて植民地にされた仕返しでやったって言ってるだけど。 http://www.latimes.com/sports/la-sp-wbc-asia20-2009mar20,0,540233.story If both teams win -- South Korea against Venezuela on Saturday and Japan over the U.S. on Sunday -- they will meet again in Monday's championship game. But should that happen, a baseball title will be only part of what's at stake. "Because of history," says Kim, a baseball writer with SportsChosun of Seoul, "there's bad memories." That will happen when one country invades, then annexes, another, as Japan did to Korea, leaving only when expelled after World War II. Even now the suspicions and distrust run deep, leaving the nations as reluctant allies. But if the bad blood started with history, it also has become territorial and cultural. And the baseball field has not been immune to those tensions.
"It goes back to our history and tradition," agreed former Dodgers pitcher Jae Seo, who planted a South Korean flag on the mound at Angel Stadium after his country beat Japan in the quarterfinal round of the 2006 WBC, a ritual the Koreans repeated -- much to Japan's anger -- after beating Japan again this week. "It stems from our parents' generation and us," Seo said. "I'm sure that our next generation probably will feel the same."
"They have big bodies," Japanese outfielder Ichiro Suzuki, said through an interpreter. "They play closer to American-style baseball than Japanese baseball." In Japan, where ethnic purity has traditionally been revered, such comments smack of racism and ignore the fact