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When SRS and I came back to the apartment at about 1:00am, we turned on the TV and found ESPN2 showing a live broadcast of the Pool A first round of the World Baseball Classic this year. Normally, neither of us are baseball folks, but just as we were about to turn the channel, they announced the teams playing: Chinese Taipei (Taiwan) vs. Korea.

It was fate. It had to be fate, right? Two drunk guys with nothing to do, stumbling in at the wee hours of the morning, suddenly finding a game involving their very two countries, battling it out through the great American pastime?

The game went as expected – the Korean team blanked the Taiwanese team, 9-0. We were hoping that the Mercy Rule would be invoked so that we could finally get to bed, but nope, it just kept dragging on at 9-0 for a couple innings. (The Mercy Rule in the WBC is up by 15 by the 5th inning or up by 10 by the 7th inning.)

The best part about all this, other than the sheer surprise of circumstance, was the discovery that one of my favorite sporting accessories, the now-ubiquitous Thundersticks, were invented by the Koreans.

Thundersticks, for the uninitiated or the deaf, are long, narrow plastic balloons that are filled with a LOT of air to make them as solid as possible. They make a surprising amount of noise when you bang then together lengthwise, and they can be deafening when tens of thousands of fans clap their Thundersticks together.

There weren’t many fans in attendance, but then again, the Tokyo Dome is pretty difficult to fill to capacity. Of course, ESPN being the good network that it is, always shows some enthusiastic or interesting fans. It showed the Korean fan contingent being all coordinated with their matching uniforms and light blue Thundersticks and their little slutty cheerleaders with their little slutty dresses and their team being all not jealous of the other team.

Then it panned to the Taiwanese fans, a group much more sparse and much less coordinated in terms of appearance and active cheering. They did, however, focus on a shot on a happy Taiwanese family, a set of parents with two happy infant girls.

Here comes the asshole comment of the day. You should have a glass of water ready at hand. You should also have some paper towels nearby.

SRS: “Too bad your fans aren’t awesome and don’t have Thundersticks.”
Me: “I wonder how well it would work if that mother slammed her two babies together repeatedly. That’s gotta be pretty distracting, right?”