Maybe we just need to be happy with the quality of umpiring we get in Major League Baseball. Park Min-woo, a 22-year-old second baseman with the NC Dinos of the Korean Baseball Organization, was trying to cover first base on a bunt Thursday night when all of a sudden...
BOOM! The first-base umpire knocked him over. Is that supposed to happen? Even in Korea, where perhaps some of their rules are foreign to us in the Western Hemisphere? No, it's not. Park Min-woo is the reigning rookie of the year, having batted .298 with 50 stolen bases in 2014, so it's sort of like if this happened to Jose Altuve when he were a rookie.
Umpires: First do no harm.
(Click on the volume toggle on the lower left-hand part of the video if you want to hear some Korean.)
And then there's this (CAUTION: DISTURBING VIDEO):
Oh, my. The umpire's name is Park Ki-taek.
Thanks as always to Dan of @MyKBO for keeping us up to date on the happenings in Korea, where Nyjer Morgan recently was put on waivers by the Hanwha Eagles after a demotion to the minors didn't work out. Just so you don't think, based on the umpire knocking over a player, that all they do is clown around in Korea, the truth is — they don't.
There had been rumors that Morgan was out of shape in spring training, which didn’t sit well with Kim Sung-keun, known as one of the most rigorous managers in the KBO.
Kim expressed his dislike of Morgan’s trademark “T ceremony,” where the player forms the letter “T” with his arms, even in inappropriate situations.
On April 8 against the LG Twins, Morgan hit a single in the second inning, then was thrown out trying to steal. Returning to the dugout, he did his “T ceremony” while smiling and chatting with teammate Shane Youman.
“He laughs even he strikes out,” Kim told reporters after the game. “Can it be that he’s just a comedian?”
However, Kim on Wednesday downplayed Morgan’s attitude as a factor in his release, saying he just wasn’t a very good hitter.
Oh, Nyjer.
