wholly shit, talk about a comeback! japan had only won 3 of it’s 7 games when it made it into the semifinals by the thinnest of margins and the wacky rules of round-robin play. korea was due when japan finally beat them on saturday, but to come back tonite, and beat cuba 10-5 in an amazing game (japan scored 4 runs in the first inning and cuba hit a homerun of it’s first swing of the bat) is sure to make the world baseball classic a game that’s gonna be around for a while. the game on saturday had 51% television viewership in japan (a game at around 12p on their sunday). all of the games at petco park were sold out with only expensive tickets left on ebay, and even the japan/korea game me and ben saw at anaheim had a crowd of 39,000.

but what a great series. i’d've been happy to see either usa or japan win, but since usa didn’t advance, i was rootin’ strong for japan. it’s amazing how strong all the other countries turned out to be. usa was beaten by mexico, canada and korea, and technically japan too but that bogus call let usa slip by with that one win. i just got like 5 texts while typing this, like mike’s that say “hooray japan!” … werd.