by Orrin Konheim

Created on: January 06, 2009

It is difficult to compare professional or collegiate sports teams in North America to the national teams that compete in the Olympics who bear the pride of an entire nation on their shoulders. Unlike the NBA or NFL, national teams can't trade their players leaving the fans are stuck for life with whatever socio-economic circumstances are at play. Sports fans who grow up in Iceland, a country with only 300,000 people, know better than to get their hopes up when the Icelandic go up against countries with populations 100 times their size in an Olympic team, and when they break through with a silver in team handball, it's surely a cause of celebration. When one of these national pipedreams come true for these underdogs, I can't help but feel a tremendous sense of joy. This is why I'm drawn to the story of the South Korean Olympic baseball squad.

In South Korea, baseball is a favorite past time as roaring crowds line the stadium with jubilant cheers at every game, but their league and its star athletes have not attracted the international attention that Japanese exports Daisuke Matsuzaka, Ichiro Suzuki, or Hideo Matsui have enjoyed. Like Iceland, kids growing up in South Korea know their national team can only do so much without the stars of neighboring rival Japan, the talent base of the United States or the relentless drive of penniless prodigies in the Dominican Republic who know that their ticket out of poverty is a Major League contract. Entering the Olympic tournament, South Korea was considered a long-shot against the teams from Cuba and Japan. Pitcher Bong Jung-Keun said after the gold medal game, "We didn't even think about getting a gold medal. We were thinking third place, that was our goal."

If the team saw themselves as a third-rate team, they certainly didn't play like it. In the opening round, they plowed through the United States, Cuba, and Japan and becoming the first team since 1996 to enter Olympic medal round undefeated.

In the finals, South Korea's nerves were tested in a nail biter where they faced the Cubans for a second time. Cheers erupted all over Seoul as South Korea took the lead in the first inning with a two-run homer in the first inning, but the squad never had enough momentum to develop more than a one-run lead over the Cubans going into the bottom of the ninth inning where they had the disadvantage of being in the field at the bottom of the ninth. Things took a turn for the worse when starting pitcher Ryu Hyun-Jin started succumbing

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