2008 Asia Series Schedule

Garrett DeOrio — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 13:05:23 +0000

They tell us it's not possible to promote a tournament in which they're participating, but we can do better. People can be told about the Asia Series. Yes, we can.

The baseball season will draw to a close this weekend with the 2008 Asia Series, pitting the champions of NPB’s Japan Series, KBO’s Korea Series, CPBL’s Taiwan Series, and the CBL champions against one another in a three-day round robin single-game tournament, followed by a one-game championship between the top two teams on Sunday.

Sadly, the event, one of the few in which fans can see how the different leagues stack up in a direct way, has been, as always, poorly promoted, if at all. The Seibu Corporation, which has plastered its train lines with posters celebrating the Saitama Seibu Lions’ Japan Series Championship and offered a sale at its department stores, crammed with scuffling housewives who wouldn’t know a thing about the Lions were it not for the sales, but has its promotion of the Lions’ participation in the Asia Series, in Tokyo this year, invisible.

For those who, like us, are interested, here’s the schedule:

(All games at Tokyo Dome.)

Thursday, November 13th:

12:00 – Tianjin Lions (CBL) vs. Uni-President 7-Eleven Lions (CPBL)
6:00 – Saitama Seibu Lions (NPB) vs. SK Wyverns (KBO)

Friday, November 14th:

12:00 – SK Wyverns vs. Tianjin Lions
6:00 – Uni-President 7-Eleven Lions vs. Saitama Seibu Lions

Saturday, November 15th:

12:00 – Saitama Seibu Lions vs. Tianjin Lions
6:00 – SK Wyverns vs. Uni-President 7-Eleven Lions

Championship Game, Sunday, November 16th:

2:00 – Round Robin Runner-up vs. Round Robin Winner

You can follow the results here with us and see updated standings on our Game Results page.

On to the Asia Series (for Saitama, anyway)

Garrett DeOrio — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 23:54:29 +0000

First of all, our congratulations to the Saitama Seibu Lions for winning their thirteenth Japan Series title and, even more so, for winning that title by beating Yomiuri. We would have preferred seeing them humiliatingly crushed while, somehow, each of one their fans managed to spill his drink right on his crotch, thus making it appear that he had wet himself, thereby embarrassing himself in public, but we know of no such thing ever happening, so we’ll take the awful despair that comes with coming about as close as possible to winning a championship without actually getting it.

Perhaps next year, we’ll see more changes to the playoff rules to keep this from happening – look for the Central League Pennant winner to start each game with two runs or something to make the playoffs even more Yomiuri-friendly.

All sarcasm aside, though the Lions now move on to the Asia Series, which begins on Thursday and where they’ll face the SK Wyverns of the Korean Baseball Organization (KBO) to start. (SK promises “Real Sportainment”, which we simply cannot resist.)
More baseball, a chance to see how the champs from Japan’s NPB (Saitama Seibu Lions, of course), Korea’s KBO (SK Wyverns), Taiwan’s CPBL (Uni-President 7-Eleven Lions), and China’s CBL (Tianjin Lions) stack up head-to-head, and another excuse to eat junk food and drink beer. (Yes, three of the four participating teams are called the Lions, with the CBL’s Tianjin Lions even using a font almost identical to Saitama’s for their logo, but sans the cutesy cartoon white lion.)

All of the 2008 Asia Series games will be held at the Tokyo Dome. Stick with us, we’ll be around and we hope to hear from all of you.

燕軍 Tokyo Swallows» Taiwanese Professional Baseball

2008 Asia Series Schedule

On to the Asia Series (for Saitama, anyway)