Monday morning quarterbacking

ADDENDUM TO POST:
While some of the Korea-bashers would have you believe that whining about losses and bad calls and what-not is pretty much a Korean thing, it would seem that some in Japan--the country that won the WBC--are complaining about bad calls and the fact that the umpires were all American.

The Nihon Keizai Shimbun described one questionable umpire ruling as a "puzzling judgement," saying it "left a bad aftertaste."

Oh, bitch, bitch, bitch. When are Korean fans and the media going to learn to be better sports when they win?

ORIGINAL POST:
Over at the recently rechristened Marmot's Hole, there are sixty messages in less than twenty-four hours by people in the Korea-related blogosphere making a big deal about Koreans making a big deal over a ball game. Ironic much?

For the record, I think the flag-planting was "oba," but the griping about how they lost is sort of normal (and it's certainly NOT the only reaction in Korea).

About the griping, I'm reminded of a different team in Anaheim last October who felt that "we wuz robbed." People in OC griped about it for months — still gripe about it — because that's what people, including the local press and the venerably vaunted netizens, do when the home team loses in circumstances that seem a little less than a clear-cut and deserved loss.

It's hardly a uniquely Korean trait.

At any rate, I'll be happy if most people do what the people around me did yesterday (and did with the World Cup in 2002): just be happy that they did as well and got as far as they did. Only one person had anything bad to say about Ichiro, but it came with a mixed message.

But if people are going to be angry, maybe it's better to have it directed primarily at Ichiro (who seems to have brought some of it on himself) than at Japan in general.

My twenty-won worth. Good day.