Avoiding National Service - Korean Style

Most of the 3,500 spectators in the compact stadium on the east bank of the Pearl River stood and cheered as the batter approached the plate.

He usually plays in front of bigger crowds and faces better pitchers but this was different.

Shin-soo Choo is an outfielder for the Cleveland Indians and is what baseball scouts call a five tool player -he is good at everything. The 28-year-old is a productive hitter and last season became the first Indians player since 1901 to have a batting average of .300, hit at least 20 home runs and steal 20 bases. He can play ball.

By professional baseball standards Choo is poorly paid - $500,000 a year - but he has hired a top agent and expects to earn twenty times his current salary in the next few years.

During the off season he resides in Phoenix, Arizona with his wife. He is living the American dream but for all his skill, wealth and enviable lifestyle he had a major league problem.

South Korean men have to serve two years in the army before they are 30 and Choo was about to strike out. Two seasons out of baseball would seriously damage his career. And with North Korea stinging for World War III military service would be no stroll in the ballpark.

The Indians had explored American citizenship but the South Korean government would have cut Choo loose.

There was another way out. Gold medallists are excused national service but Major League Baseball refused to allow Choo to compete in Beijing in 2008 and baseball has been dropped from the 2012 games in London.

Choo's last chance was the Asian Games in Guangzhou.

In the four games en route to the final Choo batted. 571 with three home runs, six walks, eight runs scored and 11 runs batted in (RBI's) and here he was stepping up in the final against Chinese Taipei with his future on the line.

Choo never flinched, hit a line drive to right field and hustled to first. He then stole second before a teammate scored him with another single.

Korea were up and running and in the fourth inning scored four more runs, including a three run homer, to lead 6-1. Relief pitcher Sukmin Yoon and his curveball frustrated the Chinese Taipei and Korea won 9-3.

" Honestly if I told you I didn't think about the military service I might be a liar," said Choo after the game.

" But it wasn't the primary reason for joining the national team. I love baseball and I am really proud of my nation. That's why I want to play for this team. I am representing all the Korean baseball players."

Right now there is a man sitting at home in Phoenix, Arizona with a gold medal on the mantelpiece and heaving a sigh of relief almost as loud as the artillery on the Korean Peninsula.

A Letter From China

The Asian Games will pass under the radar of all but the most committed British sports fan but here in Guangzhou and around the rest of the continent they are a big deal.

10,000 athletes and as many journalists have gathered in this sub-tropical industrial city in southern China to play games and describe them.

As with the Olympic Games two years ago China has spent big. Stadiums, transport systems and accommodation are all new. Thousands of polite and patient locals have been hired to keep it smooth for athletes, spectators and the media.

At the China Mobile shop the staff are charged with putting the media community online. They, too, are long on politeness and patience. They had to go the distance for this iDiot and his iPad.

45 nations are taking part in the games and the enormous food hall caters for many different diets. The elongated serving counter is divided into Guangzhou Flavor, Asian Flavor and Western Flavor which mostly look and taste the same.

There is also a Muslim Flavor section but it is taped off and has different colour seats - presumably to keep out the sweet and sour infidels.

The organisers have thought of almost everything. They have, though, underestimated the Anglo-Saxon capacity for alcohol. By day three there was no more beer, gin or vodka. The finger of suspicion was pointed at the Aussies who were too busy stockpiling the remaining wine, brandy and whiskey to care.

It is too early to judge the quality of the 42 sports but in the women's cricket match between Malaysia and China the first ball of the match was a looping full toss which the batter missed and was bowled. The commentator almost stifled his guffaw.

Other sports are exotic. Rallies in soft tennis go on for ever, wushuw is martial arts dancing with grimacing and floppy swords and sepaktakraw is foot volleyball. They make for colourful television.

Work is full on but there was a day to acclimatise and three colleagues headed downtown. Guangzhuo is the third largest city in China and the fastest growing in the world. It is modern and busy but no tourist attraction.

Perhaps that was why we were treated as curiosities. People chatted, took pictures and pointed and giggled at the Westerners wearing shorts and shades in winter.

Even on a work day the streets were jammed with shoppers eager to be parted from their Yuan. Trade roared in small shops and department stores alike.

China has embraced capitalism but the state remains authoritarian and slightly sinister. Social networking and blogging are banned as is having more than one child or dog.

For the visitor there are ways round the censor. It will be decades before its 885 million official residents are allowed to do what they like.

The Forgotten Champion

On a summer's evening, beer to hand, the ageing athlete recalled how he became the last amateur to win the Australian Open.

On the grass courts of Kooyong Tennis Club Bill Bowrey beat Juan Gisbert of Spain 7-5 2-6 9-7 6-3 6-3. Bill is a modest man and reminded the listener the tournament took place in turbulent times and the defending champion and many other professionals were excluded.

In the late Sixties tennis was a world away from the revolutionary streets of Paris and the radical campuses of America but the leading players were determined to counter the culture of amateurism.

Roy Emerson had won the title five years in a row but, like Bill's other mates, Rod Laver, John Newcombe, Ken Rosewall and Lew Hoad he was now officially playing for money.

Titles and glory came to them all in the Open era but Tex (he once fell off a stationary horse in front of his tennis pals) never turned professional or won another Grand Slam.

Soon after his triumph in a Melbourne suburb he married Lesley Turner (twice a French Open champion), retired in 1972, became a coach, ran tournaments and raised a family.

Most tennis fans have never have heard of Bill but those who have heard him on Radio Wimbledon every year recognise a knowledgeable, perceptive and skilful broadcaster.

He knows what to say, how to say it and when to say it. He takes the job but never himself seriously and is a joy to listen to.

The BBC reportedly pay five-time Wimbledon champion John McEnroe £200,000 for his contribution over the fortnight. Bill never threw tantrums, took drugs or was called an asshole by the novelist and tennis enthusiast Martin Amis but on the wireless he is sharper, funnier and warmer.


The kind of bloke who you would like to buy a beer.

Brooking The Trend

The Football Association is poised to reveal the Englishman who will join Team Fabio.

Actually the word poised in the same sentence as Football Association is inappropriate. Imbalanced, hamstrung, ridiculous, yes. But poised, no. 

Anyway the FA have been looking for the right indigenous man and an announcement is imminent.

Conducting the search is one of the good guys. Sir Trevor Brooking is the FA’s director of football development and he has plenty of UEFA Pro license holders from which to choose.

But who would want to work for an organization as deluded, deranged and dysfunctional as the Football Association? 

The manager is a 64-year-old Italian on £16,500 a day who was out-thought by a bunch of students from Cologne during the World Cup. Three years in and he continues to grapple with the culture. 

The players think they are world beaters and sometimes pass to each other but they are man marked by the tabloids and seem to care more about bank balances, body art and bling. 

And there is little leadership and no money. They have yet to find another chairman after the last one had to leave six months ago when a tabloid stung him right in his big mouth. And since the summer the FA have been without a main sponsor. They were banking on a big offer when England won in South Africa.

Sir Trevor, then, needs someone a bit special. He could do worse than select the best pundit in the game. 

He has played top flight club football, represented England youth, captained the under 21’s and but for injuries would have won full caps.  He has coached at every level and is passionate, educated, intelligent and articulate.

His name is Stewart Robson.

The Game That Ate Itself

The cricket insider spoke slowly and softly,

“If the public knew how much of it went on they would be shocked and disgusted and the game would die.”

He went on,

“It’s the talk of every dressing room and so is the famous cricketer who does it in the Indian Premier League.”

Then he mentioned the late Bob Woolmer.

“Most people think he was about to expose it and was taken out.”

Strong stuff but the insider declined to put his name to it.

The 2010 English summer began with the arrest of Essex cricketers Mervyn Westfield and Danesh Kaneria. 

They were accused of spot-fixing - a niche area of gambling where bets are laid with illegal bookmakers on specific occurrences during a match.

Last month Westfield was charged with conspiracy to defraud. Kaneria, a Pakistan spin bowler,  faces no further action.

But the extent of spot-fixing in cricket was exposed during  Pakistan’s tour.

On August 29th the News of the World revealed how two Pakistan bowlers and their captain delivered a  £150,000 spot-fixing betting coup during the 4th Test at Lords.  

England refused to play the subsequent one-day series unless the three were suspended. Scotland Yard began an investigation as did the International Cricket Council.

England won the first two games of five and were hoping to wrap up the series at the Oval.

Your correspondent covered the game in south London and it was a cracker.

The tourists batted first and made 241 all out off all but two balls of their 50 overs.  

England had a chance of winning until Umar Gul ripped through the lower order and Pakistan won by 23 runs. 

The restoration of faith lasted less than ten hours. 

The next day The Sun newspaper disclosed the fix was in and had told the authorities before the game started.  The ICC tried to call the game off but failed and, as predicted, the scoring rate slowed significantly during the 39th and 40th overs.

Does it matter? After all, spot-fixing has little or no effect on the outcome of a game, nobody notices and nobody gets hurt.  

Except they do.

Woolmer was coaching Pakistan at the 2007 World Cup in the West Indies when, after a defeat by Ireland in Jamaica, he met a sudden and messy demise.

The Times reported,

“...the white-tiled bathroom floor (and) the walls were splattered high and wide with vomit, his body was surrounded by pools of blood and excrement, and a bone in his neck had snapped.

An inquest returned an open verdict.

Five years earlier former South Africa captain Hansie Cronje was killed in a plane crash. He was serving a lifetime ban from playing and coaching after admitting he fixed games.

An inquest blamed the pilots.

And then, earlier this month, David Le Cluse, the chairman of Croydon Athletic Football Club, was found dead with a gunshot wound to the the head.  

The club’s owner, Mazhar Majeed, is an agent with close links to the Pakistan cricket team and was one of those arrested over the spot- fixing allegations.

The inquest has yet to be held.

None of this is news to people close to the game. A friend and colleague, who loves cricket almost as much as he loves his wife-to-be,  dismisses it as a conspiracy theory.

He may be right but fraud has taken root in a sport that already suffers from meaningless matches, flat pitches, negative tactics, poor attendances and formulaic formats.

Corruption is the straw that broke the camel’s bat.

p.s. how to fix a game of cricket 

The Man Who Changed My Life

The former General Secretary of the National Union of Journalists would have been unimpressed.

He was a Glaswegian, a reporter from the old school. A hard-drinking, story-chasing journalist whose main aim in life was to get it right and get it first. He was also an outstanding trade unionist and a kind man.

Harry Conroy died on April 23rd of an internal haemorrhage and someone who owed him a great deal never noticed.

Six weeks after Harry passed away I was flicking through the Journalist, the magazine of the NUJ, until I reached page 28 and Harry’s obituary.

In the tribute by Francis Beckett and Lionel Morrison one paragraph in particular resonated.

“He was never in awe of anyone. It didn’t matter if you were Rupert Murdoch or the office cleaner. Harry always treated you with the same respect and courtesy.”

In 1988 I was working for the NUJ as a postboy and covering sport for a radio station at the weekends.

My attempts to enter journalism had been knocked back at every turn. I had an American girlfriend and had decided to try my luck over there. Arrangements had been made and I was seeing out the last months of my contract at NUJ headquarters.

Lionel’s term as President was coming to an end and he hosted a party at Acorn House as a thank you to the staff.

At some stage during the evening I fell into conversation with Harry. I was a few beers up and he was on the wine. He surprised me by knowing that my contract was about to end. He had been told I turned up on time, worked hard and fitted in.

“Do you want another contract?”asked Harry.

“No thanks Harry. I am off to America to seek my fame and fortune.” I replied.

When I told him how frustrated I was at my failure to find a job in journalism he was taken aback.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“ What do you want me to do? March into your office and demand a job?”

Harry said he saw my point and he would sort me out.

I doubted Harry would remember our conversation let alone act on it. I should have known better.

The next week a mate of his from Johnston Press phoned and offered me an interview in Wakefield.

When I went to thank Harry he told me he had done what he could and now it was down to me.

I got the job, went to America for a holiday, came back, was sent on a journalism course before starting work as reporter on the Ripley and Heanor News in Derbyshire.

I loved every minute on that small but significant newspaper and it set me up for a career in journalism.

Harry Conroy changed my life. Thanks Harry and rest in peace.

MAX TO THE MURRAY

The pilot of the Boeing 737 bound for Genoa gunned the engines and the passenger in 1c, as racing drivers like to say, took a bite out of the seat.

Max Damioli glanced across at the nervous flyer and smiled.

“You don’t like it?”

“No.”

“I used to be like you but then I learned how to fly an aeroplane and now I understand how safe these things are.”

And so began a conversation about the fear of flying, smoking, fencing, shooting and the fourth best tennis player in the world.

Max is a hypnotherapist and gave 1c a few tips on how to deal with the rational fear of putting his life in a stranger’s hands and moving at high velocity.

1c said he had given up smoking using hypnotherapy and Max mentioned he was also a sports psychologist and worked with Olympic fencers and shooters.

Now, 1c knows little about anything except sport and he only knows a little about that but he is curious so he asked Max about Andy Murray.

The 23 year old Scot is the most gifted player from these islands since Fred Perry who won eight Grand Slam titles between 1934 and 1936.

He is a counter puncher who uses his opponent’s pace, moves well and plays with imagination. He is fun to watch.

Murray has won 14 times on the ATP tour and has reached two Grand Slam finals. In 2008 he lost the US Open final in three sets to Roger Federer and earlier this year he went down, again, in straight sets to the world’s number one in the final of the Australian Open.

Leave aside those two matches and Murray has won six of nine matches against the best player to pick up a racquet.

Last year at Wimbledon Murray lost in the semi finals to Andy Roddick and after the match Roddick’s coach Larry Stefanki identified a tactical weakness in Murray’s game.

“He is going to have a great future if he gets to the point of recognising balls to attack and to come into the forecourt and play there rather than 15 feet behind the baseline.”

But there maybe another reason why Murray has yet to win the final point.

During matches, when he makes a mistake, Murray berates himself. The more mistakes he makes the more frequent and louder the berating. Murray is by no means unique in this but none of the other top players do it.

When asked about this tendency Max said,

“His conscious is split in two. One is judging the other. One expects to make a mistake and the other part makes the mistake. It is dividing his energy.

“ The more tension in a match the more intense the other voice becomes and the more mistakes are made. Instead of supporting him the other voice tells him off and pushes him towards making errors. It goes downhill from there very quickly.”

“Everybody is different and the solution to the problem depends on the character of the individual. Tennis is similar to golf and shooting events in the Olympics. These contests can be very long and there are plenty of opportunities for the part of the person that judges to raise its voice.

Max said the solution is to stay in the present.

“He must succeed in believing in THE point. Not the one before nor the one after. It is the power of now.

“If he asked me I would recommend he creates an anchor in training. An example would be to close his eyes, take three of four breaths and smile or tell a joke so that when he feels tension during a match he can go back to his anchor and prevent the judging side of his conscious taking over.”

Maybe this is too simple.

After all, when Murray was seven years old he survived the deadliest mass murder of children in British history when a gunman killled sixteen fellow pupils and a teacher at his primary school in Dunblane. His parents also separated around the same time.

But Max knew nothing of these events. He was talking solely about a professional athlete struggling with his other voice and 1c is a much better flyer now than before.