Japanese and Korean fans packed Dodgers stadium in Los Angeles last night for the championship game of the World Baseball Classic. Japan clinched the game in the tenth inning beating long time rival South Korea by two runs. Jeff Beresford-Howe, The Takeaway’s sports contributor, was at the game last night. He joins us now for a report.

Contributor’s Notes: Jeff Beresford Howe

Japan Wins the WBC Again

Getting Ichiro out with a championship on the line turns out to be a hard way to make a living. Korea couldn’t do it last night and because they couldn’t, Japan is baseball’s world champion again. Ichiro spoiled a bunch of wicked sliders and mid-90s fastballs from Chang Yong Lim and then whacked a tenth inning, two run single to give Japan a 5-3 victory in the World Baseball Classic at Dodger Stadium last night. Ichiro’s hit and a scoreless bottom of the tenth from Iranian-Japanese phenom Yu Darvish finished a magnificently dramatic game that featured a Japanese team that couldn’t quite land a knockout punch (they left 14 on base), brilliant fielding by Korea to get out of jam after jam, a two-out ninth inning rally by Korea to temporarily stave off defeat and a crowd that started banging and screaming from the first pitch and didn’t let up once for the four hours it took get to Ichiro and Dervish.

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The crowd was as much as a show as the game. Overwhelmingly pro-Korean – Los Angeles is the largest Korean city in the world outside the Korean peninsula – they produced more total decibels than your average Dodger crowd does over a full season. It was a familiar scene to anyone who’s seen games in Japan or Korea . The fans dress up in wild costumes, bang drums and noisemakers, scream and watch with more intensity and baseball smarts than typical American crowds. It was a real treat to see it transplanted to California.

As far as the game on the field, baseball tournament with so few games are vulnerable to upsets that leave behind the best teams, but not in this World Baseball Classic: Korea and Japan clearly established themselves as the best teams in the tournament. Korea’s got it all: pitching, defense, speed and power. They whacked a stacked Venezuelan team 10-2 on Saturday to get to the final. It’s inconceivable to me that some sad-sack organization like the Pirates or the Royals doesn’t turn over $40 million to the Korean Baseball Organization and buy themselves an all-Korean, instant contender.

Japan doesn’t have as much power as Korea but it did have easily the best pitching in the tournament – Hisashi Iwakuma had no-hit stuff against Korea – and so much speed that they actually pinch-ran Sunday night for Kosuke Fukodome, who’s one of the fastest players in the National League. The Japanese reached the finals by coasting to a 9-4 victory on Sunday night against a mistake-prone American team, which saw David Wright, Derek Jeter and Brian Roberts all make big errors and Adam Dunn plod after a ball in right field that salted the game away for the Japanese.

Dervish finished up against the Americans too and was throwing 100 MPH fastballs and breaking balls between 82 and 87. He was unhittable when he was in the strike zone. Dervish would be the consensus Young Stud of the tournament if that honor already didn’t belong to the Cuban Arddis Chapman, a 21-year-old lefty who throws 102 MPH and also has a slider that has to be seen to be believed. He has no control, and he has to find a way out of the Cuban system if he’s going to play in the majors, but there isn’t a GM in baseball who wouldn’t give his first-born for the rights to Chapman.

Want more of Jeff Beresford's Howe thoughts on the World Baseball Classic? Here's his note, Is the World Baseball Classic Worth it?