The Art Neuro Weblog

Olympic Baseball Has Begun
That's right. The sports nut folks of the world are going nuts for people running, jumping, leaping, gymnastisizing, swimming, diving, riding, lifting, throwing, this guy here is saying "Olympic baseball is here!!!"

So far the results are a mixed bag.
Cuba edged Australia 4-1, but looking at the box score, you can see that Cuba were hitting Craig Anderson, while Australia were largely hapless against Cuban Lefty Adiel Palma. Notable in the loss for me was Rodney Van Buizen who got a hit and scored; one of 2 hits against Palma by the entire Australian lineup.

Canada dropped Taiwan 7-0 in what was a whitewash. A closer look at the box score reveals that Taiwanese Ace Chang Chih-Chia hurled a credible 6 innings of 3 run ball, 2 of which were unearned; he struck out 9 and walked 3 in an awesome display of pitching. Then his bullpen wasted another 4 runs to make up the 7 that left the Chinese for dead. The bats really didn't do any talking for the Taiwanese.

Canada's Mike Johnson pitched a solid 7 innings striking out 3 and walking 1, scattering 4 hits. Canada's squad consists of US Minor leaguers and is considered pretty strong. Obviously their defense is solid.

This is the kind of game I love in the Olympics: Netherlands versus Greece. The hard-hitting Dutch clobbered the sock-less Greeks 11-0. Both teams are a complete mystery, except the league in Greece is only 5 years old whereas the Netherlands have been playing the Olympic baseball scene since 1992 when baseball became official; so this result isn't that surprising. Looking at the box score, the only thing that can be gleaned from this result is that the Greeks were totally outclassed by Davey Johnson's boys on Orange. If you may recall, Davey Johnson was the last manager to lead the blue-and-orange NY Mets to a World Series win over the ill-fated Bosox back in 1986. Orange, obviously suits him well.

Japan thrashed Italy 12-0 getting a called game in the 7th. This year, Japan has stocked up on Top-Tier professionals to bring home the Gold Medal. Unlike in Sydney 2000 where the team consisted of a mixed Professional and amateur group, this time Japan has come in all-pro; stacked to the nines with their NPB hitters and arms that could go play the majors tomorrow; and this early result says it all. They're there for the gold medal. Koji Uehara pitched 6 shut-out innings striking out 4, scattering 4 hits. Uehara says he kept his Forkball out of it, so that it wouldn't get scouted. So essentialy he pitched without his best pitch.
Norihiro Nakamura homered, keeping up the form he had at the Sydney Olympics... maybe not. :)

And that's it for the first round of preliminaries. Ain't the internet amazing!?

- Art Neuro