Two days ago I watched Game 5 of the World Series... at 1 AM. What a game! No, it's not because of the time difference. It's because I don't have cable tv. I already knew the outcome because I saw the results of the game on ESPN.com 6 hours earlier. It's strange though. I didn't really watch the game. At 1 AM, Japanese tv edits the 3 hour game to a 30-45 minute show. How? It's quite simple actually. Fast forward the game passed the batter/pitcher duels and show only the ball being hit. Cut it even further by showing only the innings where scoring happens and the game gets reduced pretty quickly. Well, sort of. If there's a Japanese batter, the entire at bat is shown... each one. So, in this case, whenever Shinjo starts, the game slows down considerably.
Ben Weber's pitching motion. What the heck?! It wasn't until this passed game that I saw this phenomenon. I haven't laughed so hard at 1 AM in a long long time. For those of you who are not baseball fans, I wish I could find a link somewhere on the web to show a video of this strange, strange thing. Instead, I have a link from a sports writer's website on ESPN.com that in part tries to describe the indescribable. It's toward the bottom of the page. My personal favorite is the Seinfeld one.