Olympic Baseball Game...

In what turned out to be one of the most violent baseball games I have ever witnessed, the US beat China by 7 runs. What was violent about it? A US player knocked over the catcher when running into home base, this led to a lengthy argument between players, officials, and coaches and the Chinese pitchers kept hitting our players with balls when they were up to bat. It was an interesting sight!



On another note, the game was a lot of fun. My coworker Zach from Oregon attended along with Chris from Oklahoma, a college student who bought my extra ticket through an online ad I had posted. Chris showed up in American flag face paint. The game went on rather slowly with China not scoring until the 9th inning, and that was home run! The only home run of the game. Since these tickets were purchased in China, we were on China's side. This was interesting; in the midst of the crowd shouting "Zhong guo" (China) over and over, we chimed in with "Mei guo" (America) This brought us many polite laughs and some good natured ribbing (in Chinese, I think it was good natured, they smiled when they did it) from people sitting near us. We even attracted quite a few Chinese cameras. If this had been Mississippi State vs. Ole Miss knives would have come out instead of cameras. People are going to be talking about these three "laowai' (foreigners) across Beijing whenever they pull out those pictures!



I hope to have more pictures later when I can get some from Zach's camera, but here are a few:

Wukesong Baseball Stadium


The Olympic Cheerleaders



Go Mei Guo, thanks to Chris for lending the flag.