On Sunday, Kawasaki high school student and knuckleballer Eri Yoshida (吉田えり) was drafted by the Kobe 9 Cruise, making her the first woman to play professional baseball in Japan.

Yoshida-san is only 16-years old, 5-feet tall (152-centimeters), and 114 pounds (52 kilograms). Still, the right-handed pitcher struck out male batters straight for one inning during professional tryouts. Her strong performance made her one of the 33 players picked in the draft.

The knuckleball is the hardest pitch to throw, catch and hit. Few can master it. Yoshida-san admires Boston Red Sox pitcher Tim Wakefield, who has built a successful major league career as a knuckleballer.

The Kobe 9 Cruise, a professional team in a new independent Japanese league that will start its first season in April.
Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: baseball, grrl power, kawasaki, Kobe 9 Cruise, red sox, Tim Wakefield, yoshida

Any basketball fans out there? Excited for the upcoming NBA season? I sure am – I’ve been saving my lunch money for one of those huge HDTVs and getting NBA League Pass from Comcast so I can watch every single NBA game from my room. Not that I don’t love the hometown Warriors, it’s just that after our star player Baron Davis decided to jump ship, I haven’t been… meh… the W’s are gonna suck this season. I wanna watch good games with good teams!

Which got me wondering – how many Asian players are currently on an NBA roster? You might have heard of Wang Zhizhi, the first Asian player in the NBA with stints on the Mavericks, Clippers, and Heat, or Yuta Tabuse, Japan’s (shorter) version of Michael Jordan who played sparingly with the Suns. Little-known Sean Chen made it as far as the Sacramento Kings’ preseason roster, but was cut at the end. Remember that huge guy in Rush Hour 3? 7’9” Sun Ming Ming has dabbled with the NBA as well. However, there’s only three currently on an NBA team roster – perennial all-star Yao Ming, second year player Yi Jianlian, and rookie Sun Yue.
Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: basketball, joe alexander, nba, sun yue, yao ming, yi jianlian

You know, we often talk about the success stories of our heroes without talking about their pitfalls, their struggles, their hurdles.

Pat Morita,  better known as Mr. Miyagi, from the movie The Karate Kid, taught a generation of young people how to block a punch with  “wax on, wax off” while coaching “Daniel-san” karate and catching flies with chopstick.

Moving on to what you did not know.

Doctors told Pat Morita that he would not be able to walk when he was diagnosed with spinal tuberculosis at the age of two. He spent the next nine years, enduring long periods in full body casts, in various Californian hospitals.

It took fusing four vertebrae in Pat’s spine for him to finally learn how to walk again at the age of 11. By this time, in the middle of WWII, his family had been sent to a Japanese internment camp in Arizona .
Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Pat Morita, Wax off: Overcoming spinal tuberculosis, Wax on

Several weeks ago I had a short post on Ningin about Anthony Kim and also Michael Chang, on the day when Chang was inducted into the Tennis Hall of Fame. Today on ESPN, there is a video feature on Kim, who has already won 2 PGA tournaments before the age of 23, a feat accomplished by only one other man ever: Tiger Woods (who is half Asian by the way).  The Ryder Cup just started recently and Kim is paired up with Phil Mickelson, as the US hopes to start out strong against the Europeans.

The video is about growing up in California, the sacrifices his family made for him, as well as his turbulent relationship with his father. It also had a touch of the pressures and expectations he faced while growing up, which I am sure many Asian American youth can relate to.

Here is the link to the video.

Tags: anthony kim, asian american, golf, ryder cup, tiger woods

I’m not a golf fan, but I have heard a lot about Korean-American golf superstar Michelle Wie…..a sensation at 13, got to play on men’s circuit, now playing well recently. This season, she didn’t do well enough to qualify for the LPGA circuit, and must go back and qualify in the traditional way. Many blame her parents–her dad’s the manager.

Here’s a link to the Yahoo! Sports writeup by Jay Busbee. Some of the comments people made are offensive….particularly the one about her getting laid.

Link to Yahoo! Sports

Any thoughts? Any projections on her future career? And what about her dad, anyway?

Tags: golf, Michelle Wie, parenting

This is ridiculous.  Imagine if someone made a similar demand of baseball, basketball, or tennis players around the globe.  This is clearly in response to insecurity/resentment over growing numbers of talented minorities in the sport, most notably South Koreans.  This reminds me of the same kind of superiority complex/arrogance from certain Anglo travelers who expect people to speak English in whatever country they travel in.

Article Link

Excerpt:

The LPGA will require its member golfers to learn and speak English and will suspend their membership if they don’t comply, Golfweek reported on its Web site.

According to the report, the new requirement was communicated to the tour’s growing South Korean membership in a mandatory meeting at the Safeway Classic in Portland, Ore., on Aug. 20.

…Players were told by LPGA commissioner Carolyn Bivens that by the end of 2009, all players who have been on the tour for two years must pass an oral evaluation of their English skills or face a membership suspension. A written explanation of the policy was not given to players, according to the report.

…”The LPGA could come out and say they only want 10 Koreans, but they’re not,” Park said, according to Golfweek. “A lot of Korean players think they are being targeted, but it’s just because there are so many of them.”

Tags: english, golf, lpga, minorities, racist, south korea, suspend, women, xenophobia

I just saw one of the best, most dramatic and meaningful baseball games in a long time this morning, South Korea vs. Cuba in the gold medal match of the Beijing Olympics. Let me try to setup the stage for you. Cuba is to international baseball like Brazil is to World Cup soccer, perennial powerhouse. The three favorites to medal were Japan, Cuba, and the United States, so South Korea according to odds makers, wasn’t even suppose to medal. Somehow, South Korea improbably won 8 straight games including defeating Japan in the semi-finals one day prior. Cuba defeated the United States in the semis losing only once to South Korea in regular play and looking to avenge their loss. And Cuba easily has the best hitters in the game, some good enough for the Major Leagues, but South Korea has dominant pitching, especially today’s champ and Korean Ace, Ryu Hyun-jin. (more on Ryu later)

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: baseball, cuba, dramatic, game, japan, olympics, ryu hyun jin, south korea, united statse, victory

Hurdler champion Liu Xiang has been the center of attention in recent Olympic news after he had walked away from his most anticipated race.

Liu Xiang has been the center of attention since the 2004 Athens Olympics where he became the first Chinese man to win an athletics gold in the 110m hurdles. He has also set a world record in 2006 and captured a world championship in 2007. Liu then became more than an athlete but a hero to China.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: 2008, athens, beijing, china, hero, hurdler, injury, liu xiang, olympics

The gymnastic events are coming to an end and China has come out on top. Although there was a lot of controversy over the ages of the women gymnasts from China, the rumors haven’t fazed them one bit.

Before the Olympics had started, the US had raised questions of the age of China’s gymnastics team members He and Jiang Yuyuan, an all around Olympic medal contender. The New York Times claimed they were younger than 16 (the minimum age to be eligible. In response, the Chinese Gymnastics Association provided documents of the gymnast’s ID cards and passports, showing that they were old enough. Regardless, the two gymnasts were still able to compete and did extremely well; however, US had a few hiccups which cost them.

Read the rest of this entry »

Hi, my name is Ming and I am a guest blogger for Ningin.

I don’t know about the rest of you but I’ve been spending the last few days glued to NBC. Religiously watching the Olympic is a tradition for my family (my parents have never missed a single one since 1984), but this one is extra special for us because my parents are from China and just as psyched as all 1.3 billion of them back in the motherland.

For that reason there I could feel how enormous the pressure was that China pull off the best opening ceremony ever. The Chinese care about “face” like nothing else and there would never again be an opportunity quite like this to show face to the rest of the world. All questionable facelift means aside (pun intended), there is no doubt in anyone’s mind that they pulled it off.

Read the rest of this entry »