Chinese People Play Baseball?

Perhaps I'm a bit lost on this one but the Chinese actually play baseball? Since when? They just seem like that token, you have enough players to suit up a team and play in this here International Competetion, squad. So when they played the other Asian teams in the World Baseball Classic they lost 18-2 to Japan, 10-1 to Korea and 12-3 to Chinese Taipei or Tawain or whatever you want to call it. In essence they were the worst team invited to the tourny.

Well apparently the Yankees, not surprisingly, are the first team to really scout in China and are the first to sign a single Chinese player. And while they're at it, why not make it two, as they signed two 19 year olds, a catcher Zhenwang Zhang who plays for the Tianjing Fierce Lions and Kai Liu, the Chinese Kei Igawa as in Lefty pitcher who's probably not any good. Basically this is just another effort for the Yankees to begin expanding their marketing and start dominating the Asian market. Nothing says profit more than getting a portion of that 1+ billion people to begin buying Yankee merchandising.

Apparently Zhenwang helped lead the "Fierce" Lions to the China Baseball Championship in 2002. He was 14, is that how badly baseball sucks in China that they have 14 year olds on their championship teams. Wow that's impressive. Oh and it's not like it's difficult to win the CBL title, there's only 6 teams in the league.

Of course the fun will begin with an overblown, boring and useless press conference on July 6th, which will probably exclusively be shown on the YES networks. For those of you outside the New York market, you just might have to get Satellite so that you don't miss this extraordinary event in which the Yankees talk about signing two 19 year old Chinese guys you never heard of who most likely will never suit up in pin stripes.