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Fitting finale for great CBL season
What's the deal with catchers and memorable home runs? Historically, those who bedeck themselves in baseball's "tools of ignorance" aren't renowned for their ability to rip tape-measure shots out of the park, but Yogi Berra, Roy Campanella and Johnny Bench are three Hall of Famers who could do it with the best of 'em. And let's not forget ex-Boston Red Sox backstop Carlton Fisk, whose animated coaxing of his 12th inning blast off Cincinnati's Pat Darcy to win game six of the 1975 World Series was voted No 17 on the list of baseball's "100 most memorable moments." Albeit on a slightly less grandiose scale, Wang Wei's name can now be added to the pantheon of clutch-hitting catchers. Last Sunday at Fengtai Stadium the Beijing Tigers' sinewy slugger hammered a 400-foot frozen rope over the left-field wall in the 12th inning to lift his team to a wild 9-7 victory over the Tianjin Lions and a berth in this weekend's China Baseball League Finals. This kind of thing is getting to be old hat for Wang, who led the CBL in homers last season and recently rediscovered his swing after a post-All-Star break slump. Sunday's round-tripper was his third in four games - and his timing couldn't have been better. The fact the Finals will be a rematch between Beijing and Tianjin only makes it sweeter, because there's already enough bad blood between them to keep a vampire on the prowl after sunrise. Heading into last weekend's regular season closers, only two games separated Tianjin, Beijing and the Guangdong Leopards. They were 1-2-3 in the standings, and if the Leopards had swept their three-game series against the Shanghai Eagles it would've gotten mighty interesting. As it was, Beijing and Tianjin split on Friday and Saturday and Guangdong lost 2-0 on Sunday, so the extra-inning drama at Fengtai was strictly a playoff preview. And like all good previews, it left the audience hungry for more. In the fifth inning, with the Tigers clinging to a 2-1 lead and threatening with runners at the corners, a bungled suicide squeeze followed by a missed tag at the plate ignited a 20-minute argument that might easily have turned into a full-scale brawl had cooler heads not prevailed. The play started when Zheng Chouyu's attempted bunt down the first base line turned into a short-hopper back to the mound. The Tianjin pitcher scooped it up and threw back to the plate in one motion, just as Beijing's Chen Zhen was barreling in from third. Lions' catcher Ren Min appeared to tag the sliding Chen before he toed the plate (later confirmed by BTV replays), but the ump waved the runner safe. That was too much for Tianjin manager Jiao Yi, who stormed out of the dugout to protest - followed by virtually the entire Lions team. After a lot of pushing and shoving (and what sounded like some pretty good Chinese cursing), order was finally restored. Tianjin clawed back from a 3-1 deficit to lead 5-3 in the ninth, only to have Beijing pull even and set the stage for Wang's dramatic dinger three innings later. "What can I say? It was a helluva day!" exclaimed a beaming Tom McCarthy, the CBL's marketing guru. That's putting it mildly. Indeed, the entire CBL season deserves similar plaudits. The league was featured in The New York Times, USA Today and Sports Illustrated. American television crews from NBC, ABC and ESPN came out to the park to talk to players, fans - and yes, even "laowei" sportswriters - about our impressions of pro ball in the People's Republic, and the reviews were overwhelmingly positive. "Our goal is to help position baseball firmly in the mainstream of Chinese sports," McCarthy said prior to the Tigers home opener three months ago. I think it's safe to say that goal has been accomplished, and then some. But don't take my word for it - check it out for yourself. If you can't make it to Fengtai in person on Friday or Saturday, both games (9 am start) will be telecast live on BTV-6. |
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