Buried Kimchi Pot Fails to Bring Gold to Korea

After losing a ten inning thriller to Japan for the WBC championship, In-shik Kim revealed Korea's secret weapon for victory, only after it had failed.

The manager hailed just four minutes previously by all Korea as a genius, now faces round condemnation and possible exile for making pitcher Chang Yong Lim throw to Ichiro, rather than walking him in the tenth inning. The mistake allowed Ichiro to hit the two-run double that won the game for Japan, but it turns out manager Kim had a secret weapon on his side.

"Unfortunately it failed us."

So what was this secret weapon? A secret pitch that didn't work out? A trick play that went sour? No. The Korean baseball team, affectionately nicknamed "The Brady Bunch" had sent several L.A. based Korean-Americans on a secret mission before the first pitch of the tournament.
"After reading the story of Canada winning Hockey Gold in the 2002 Olympics by hiding a Canadian dollar under center ice in Salt Lake Ice Center, a group of loyal Korea fans buried a pot of kimchi below the pitcher's mound at Dodger Stadium, hoping that Kimchi Power would spur Korea on to victory."
Though the clandestine pot burial was successful, the strategy was not.

"We're not sure what went wrong -- I mean, kimchi power is stronger than SARS!" Manager Kim shook his head, "I'm totally baffled. I even moved my ancestors' grave sites to a different mountainside for a more auspicious future before the tournament, and had a lucky character tattooed on my chest after a recommendation from my local shaman, but none of my iron-clad strategies worked out. Damn Japanese."

The rest of Korea's players, pictured here after a prankster glued their jackets to the dugout fence, were equally disappointed."We've been eating nothing but Kimchi for days now," third-baseman Bum Ho Lee said, before shifting his weight a little. Moments later a powerful fermented garlic smell filled the press room. "You can imagine what the locker room's like. I can't believe we went through all this to lose at the last minute."
Japanese star Ichiro Suzuki, known for making garlic jokes in the past, was asked what he thought about the Korean kimchi-only diet. "It's like when you see a girl, and you pass her on the street again and again, so you hang out and you find out that she has bad teeth, but that doesn't matter because it might be destiny, and then after a few dates you find yourself kind of disliking her, but she's gotten attached, and she's passive-aggressive, but has a great rack, so you're laying there spooning on the couch, hoping to get to second base, but a little ashamed of yourself for lowering your standards, but maybe going for a sympathy screw before you break up with her, and she's needy and she sent you ten text messages that day, and she kind of smells like olives, but then suddenly a really great TV commercial comes on. That's what I think of when I think of this WBC, and playing Korea."

And what about the garlic?

Ichiro smiled. "Garlic jokes? That was so 1997. Too easy, anyway. These days I make plastic surgery jokes instead. Get with the times, man!"

So at the next World Baseball Classic, how will Korea change its repeated fate of performing well, only to be eliminated by Japan? With pitching? Strong fundamentals? More team-building and chemistry? Attention to execution and detail?

"We hope to bury the pot earlier next time, so that it will be more deeply fermented. That should fix things," Manager Kim said. "Also, we plan to poison the Japanese natto. And plant bigger flags. Like, a really fu¢king big one."

Dae Han Min Guk!