Though the game will be kicking off at 7am local time on Wednesday morning, the Orioles media types estimate that between one and two million people in Taiwan will be tuning in to see Wei-Yin Chen's Major League debut. Roch Kubatko wrote on Twitter that there were 15 people from 9 Taiwanese news outlets here to cover the game, which will be airing live on three different TV stations. By my estimation, that means Taiwanese reporters will outnumber the usual suspects about two to one, and the number of people watching in Taiwan will be something like 25 times greater than the average MASN audience. No pressure, guys.
Chen's opposite for the Yankees is Freddy Garcia, one half of the Demonic Blood Pact duo from the 2011 Yankees (along with Bartolo Colon). Garcia's the one who stayed with the Yankees to try to squeeze out another year. We'll see if he can stretch out the dark magic again. He gave the Yankees 25 starts of a 3.62 ERA. That was good for 2nd on the staff behind Sabathia, and as we all know, would have been tops on the Orioles.
There have also been some stories today about whether or not there will be any retribution after a little jawing last night between Robert Andino and Russell Martin. Apparently, Martin thought that Andino was tipping pitches. Does one need to tip pitches against Mariano Rivera? Pretty sure he's gonna throw the cutter. Often when there's speculation about this kind of stuff, it amounts to nothing. Asked by the media about it before tonight's game, Andino said, "I ain't a fortune teller," although it'd be pretty cool if he was.
Most likely it's just more incidence of the Yankees whining about things they would happily do to others. We saw this demonstrated frequently with a pitcher like Jeremy Guthrie, where Joe Girardi would complain about HBPs while completely ignoring anything done by AJ Burnett. That's kind of fair, actually. If I had AJ Burnett on my pitching staff, I'd want to ignore him too. There was also all that stuff from Curtis Granderson on behalf of the Yankees in the Hurricane Irene rescheduling, where they were complaining about losing an off day. Here's the amount that I cared about that complaint.
Whether or not there's drama during the game, there will in fact be a baseball game tonight. Will Chen have the advantage of crafty Asian stuff that nobody has any film on? Will Garcia mystify O's batters with his junk 87 mph fastballs and offspeed stuff? Will the spoiled, entitled dickbags with the $210 million payroll be sent back to their hotel rooms wondering what just happened? I think you know what I'm rooting for. I think I know what you're rooting for, too. Go O's!