High school baseball game

While Beijing spent millions of dollars on its over the top Olympic sports complexes, the baseball stadium was constructed with scaffolding. It reminded me of a few high school baseball fields pieced together. To enter you had to climb al the way up the back stairs and then go back down to your seat which had no backrest.

This was not a surprise being that China has very little interest in Baseball at the moment. They do have an Olympic baseball team, but they won't be picking up the gold, silver or bronze. From what I understand, when the games are over they'll be tearing this down. I guess there's no point in spending big bucks on it.

The game was like a lazy day at work that never seems to end. Before the 11th inning there were only four combined hits. In the 11th they used the new Olympic rule to force the game to an end. They automatically put runners on first and second with no outs. This is funny because I was just talking with my friend Dan from Pittsburgh about this and he said that he didn't want to watch baseball because of this stupid rule. Well, I saw it play out and it worked exactly like the Olympic committee planned. The game was over after the 11th. The US hammered Japan after receiving the forced crutch. The rule is pretty lame being that it completely changes the game.

Many people think that both the US and Japan wanted to lose. The loser plays Korea while the winner plays Cuba.

Upon entering and exiting the stadium I was amazed at the amount of ticket scalping. Easily, there were hundreds of scalpers. They were prepared with signs in many languages. Like scalpers anywhere in the world they were annoying.

To end on a bright note, beer (bud, tsingtao, yanjing) were all about .75 each. I paid $8.00 in Tokyo. Also, we made it out of the stadium and on the train in about 8 minutes.