April 21st, 2009

I am an observationist, to a fault I notice a lot of what is going on around me. Mostly it is useless things that people don’t find interesting, but every once in a while they do.

For example, I recently pointed out to a friend who spends a significant time in both Japan and Korea how much I disliked the quality and feel of napkins in restaurants in Japan (they’re waxy, small and not very absorbent) and hoped Korea was not the same. He told me he never noticed them before but now every time we go out to eat he brings it up. Another time I was at Fenway Park in Boston and noted to a teammate something strange about the foul poles at the stadium. He told me he played for the Red Sox for 6 years and never noticed it, but then couldn’t help starring at what I had showed him the rest of the game. I think this trait is a result of growing up in the Seinfeld generation.

I guess I am just always noticing what is going on around me which isn’t always a good thing, especially as a pitcher, I have to really concentrate to get that tunnel vision you hear athletes talk about so often.

Some things I have seen over the past couple of weeks that caught my eye:

- In Korea older moms and daughters or elderly female friends hold hands or interlock arms a lot when they are walking down the street. It looks nice.

- I saw an umpire standing behind the batting cage during batting practice getting into his game stance, watching the pitch and completely going through his ball and strike calls at the top of his lungs while another umpire critiqued him.

- During a recent game our team skipped batting practice. It wasn’t a day off from BP, those don’t exist in Asia, we had played poor defense the day before so instead of hitting we took infield practice during our BP time. I’d love to see the reaction of players in the States if you tried to pull that one off.

- I don’t think they use the term or sell things by the “dozen” in many places outside the U.S., ten eggs in a carton here.

- Single riders in taxi cabs in Korea often sit in the front seat next to the driver and leave the back seat empty.

- I had warmed up and was ready to start the 3rd inning the other day but had to wait because the manager of the other team was holding a full team meeting in the dugout. It wasn’t a short wait.

- About every other day I stop into Dunkin’ Donuts and grab some donuts for the manager and the team. The same girl is always working the counter and I always greet her with a smile and facial expression as to say “good morning, nice to see you again.” I can never get her to smile back and she always looks at me as if she has never seen me before. I am a face in the crowd in the States, but not here, I never see other foreigners.

- In the middle of an at bat the manager of the team hitting called timeout and summoned his batter over to the on deck circle and had a meeting with him that lasted at least a minute. I saw this twice in two separate games.

- Our team played a game against the Police…and lost.

- I checked into a hotel today that had clocks with times from around the world above the reception desk; Hong Kong, Tokyo, New York, Paris and London. I noticed the minute hand was not exactly the same on all of them which immediately bothered me. Upon further review I realized the second hands weren’t moving and that the batteries were dead in each clock, there is a part of me that wanted to go buy batteries and fix them.


source: CJBaseball.com