Japan Vs South Korea for WBC championship
Japan will face South Korea tonight at 9:30est to determine the WBC champions. Japan is defending this title which they acquired in 2006 and will place Hisashi Iwakuma on the mound to face Korea’s Jung Keun Bong.
At first it may seem difficult to care about a bunch of players whose names you can’t pronounce but when you look into the pride and competitive nature of these to teams its easy to see why this has the makings to be an instant classic.
Japan carries many familiar MLB names on their roster Kosuke Fukudome(cubs), Kenji Johjima(Mariners), Akinori Iwamura (Rays), Daisuke Matsuzaka (Red Sox), Ichiro Suzuki (Mariners) and Hideki Okajima (Red Sox) while Korea carries only one Shin-soo Choo of the Cleveland Indians. Neither of these teams are known as powerhouses but rather win with good defence and even better pitching.
Iwakuma the presumptive starter tonight is a 27 year old ace who went 21-4 with a 1.87 ERA in 2008 for the Rakuten Golden Eagles edging out Yu Darvish for the ERA lead in Japans Pacific league earning him the league MVP. Iwakuma pitched brilliantly against Cuba back on March 18th allowing just 5 hits over 6 shutout innings.
Bong a former major league pitcher with the Braves and the Reds reinvented his career after returning to Korean 
baseball. In 2008, with the LG Twins, Bong had a 2.66 ERA and 140 strikeouts. He also helped Korea to the gold medal at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. Bong also started in the two previous meetings of these two teams in this classic, allowing 3 hits and scoring 2 strikeouts in 5 1/3 innings for a 1-0 victory and another 4-1 victory over 5+ innings.
Iwakuma Has not faced the Korean team in this classic. Will this give them an advantage? Will having seen Bong twice before give Japan an edge as well? Does Bong just own the Japanese hitters and is destiend to shut them down again? Will Ichiro finally have a great game where he breaks out of his hitting slump?
There are a lot of unanswered questions going into what has all the makings be one of the greatest games played in the 2009 World Baseball Classic.
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