Well hey there... We are 2-0 in the Intercontinental Cup. A International baseball tournament with 10 teams, about 7 of which that are in the worlds top 13 rankings. Here are a couple pics of our national team at the opening ceremonies...

Like I said in my previous post, we rode into Taichung, Taiwan yesterday via the "High speed train". We got up to 360 km/h or 224 MPH.... crazy.

Anywho, the Intercontinental Cup starts tomorrow, barring any flack from Megi, the Super typhoon that is teasing the coast, about an hour away...

We play Italy tomorrow, and Nicaragua Sunday 6:30pm local time... which is 6:30am Eastern USA time. If you don't know how far you are off that time... google it here. Good news is, other that out first game against the Italians, you can watch the rest of our games live online. You can find them at http://hichannel.hinet.net/intercontinental/live.html .
It's an all Taiwanese website, so even though these games are on very early in Canada and USA, I don't know if I'd trust trying to find any games archived. I am *cough* not sure *cough* if I'll be starting against Nicaragua (read between the lines).
If you want more insight on these pictures, I put them up in a new facebook album too.... check it out!

Taiwan pictures #3

Captions to follow... tomorrow or... the next day.
This is a series of pics, in almost reverse order of us travelling from Taipei to Taichung on the High Speed rail (350 km/h)...

Taiwan pics #3...

The pitchers (all 11 of us) getting bullpens in, indoors because of the rain...

The bench... bags, stuff....

The field here in Taiwan, again soaked...

Same...

My beautiful new 'Emergency' passport. Taiwan has a rule that your passport needs to be valid for at least 6 more months once you enter the coutry (no idea why)... and mine is up in a couple months, so I had to go get a NOODPASSPOORT (dutch). To make my trip legal to Taiwan...

Taiwan Pictures #2

Post-practice in Taipei... L-R Nick Stuifbergen, Me, David Bergman

Me throwing against Japan, working for the first time with new national team catcher Shawn Zarraga...

Me on Taiwanese TV, getting ready to deal...

About to uncoil...

Soaked Tien-Mu stadium, 2 rainouts out of 3 potential games in our warmups for the Intercontinental Cup...

My bag...

Nice little backdrop at this field...

Foul ball...

Inside fastball...

Taiwan pictures... #1

We are in Taipei! Currently preparing for a tournament starting Saturday called the Intercontinental Cup. It's featuring the national teams from 10 countries - Japan, Cuba, Netherlands, Italy, Czech Republic, Nicaragua, Thailand, Hong Kong, Korea and the host, Taiwan.

I brought my little camera, and will try and pop a few more pictures than I have over the other tournaments this summer. These pictures are from our first full day, in which we also played our first game, an exhibition match against Japan. We got no-hit. I think landing 12 hours before the first pitch wasn't the best for our focus during this one...

I went 1 inning, 3 k's. I actually just had a chance to watch the game on TV here, it was a very boring game, specially because I can't understand a thing they're saying. Here's a few shots from out our window here on the 13th floor in downtown Taipei, and then a couple of the dugout pregame.