By Genaro C. Armas
The Associated Press

SOUTH WILLIAMSPORT, Pa. (AP) — The Little League aces from Japan ended the United States’ five-year reign as World Series champions. Read the full story

By Chinami Tajika
NORTHWEST ASIAN WEEKLY

Don Wakamatsu, who has been the manager of the Seattle Mariners since 2009, was fired on Aug. 9. He was the manager for the Mariners for more than halfway through the 2010 season.

Don Wakamatsu (Photo by Keith Allison)

“I would like to thank the city of Seattle and all the baseball fans here in the Northwest for the great support offered to me during my time as the Mariners’ manager,” Wakamatsu said in a statement released by the team on Aug. 9. “My single biggest disappointment is that we were not able to finish what we wanted to finish here, bringing a championship club to the fans. I cannot tell you how great the fans were to me, and to my family. The support I received here will always mean a great deal to me.”

From 2003 to 2006, Wakamatsu was the Texas Rangers’ bench coach. On Nov. 19, 2008, he was named the manager of the Mariners after a national search. He was the first Asian American manager in the major leagues.

It was Wakamatsu’s second season with the Mariners. The Mariners are 43–70 so far, which is the second worst record in the American League.

Last year, the Mariners, under Wakamatsu, were 85–77.

Nevertheless, the firing of Wakamatsu isn’t sitting well with some.

“It’s frustrating,” Mariners perennial all-star Ichiro Suzuki told the Associated Press through an interpreter. “It’s not just his responsibility [that we’re losing]. It’s the whole team’s responsibility. I don’t think it’s fair to say the manager’s responsible to take the blame, because he’s not.”
Many fans were upset when the news was announced Aug. 9.

“I am saddened and shocked by the firing of Don Wakamatsu,” said Ted Yamamura, a Boeing employee and cofounder of the Executive Development Institute. “He did a great job last year in bringing the team to respectability. He certainly deserved better under the limited circumstances of the players he had to work with.”

Read the full story

CHICAGO (AP) — White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen thinks Asian players are given privileges in the United States that Latinos are not offered. Read the full story

TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — The first Taiwanese American signed by an NBA team hopes to overcome the negative stereotype of playing college basketball at Harvard and plans on eventually becoming a minister in an inner-city neighborhood.

Jeremy Lin, a 6 foot 3 undrafted point guard, signed last week with the Golden State Warriors after impressing coaches at the NBA Summer League in Las Vegas.

In five outings with the Dallas Mavericks, the soft-spoken 21-year-old native of Palo Alto, California averaged 9.8 points and 3.2 rebounds per game.

Lin arrived in Taipei early Wednesday to appear at a charity event with other NBA players and Taiwanese celebrities.

At a downtown press conference he acknowledged that his NBA career path was far from common, but insisted he could still succeed.

“Coming out of college into the draft, being Asian-American and being from Harvard, that’s not going to be an advantage because of stereotypes,” he said.

He told reporters that religion is a major part of his life and where he saw his eventual destiny.

“I still want to be a pastor somewhere down the line, that is something that is definitely on my radar,” he said. “I have an economics degree with a minor in sociology. The reason I have that is because I want to do a ministry in urban areas and help with underprivileged kids.”

Lin said his family supported his passion for basketball despite receiving criticism from some Asian-Americans that he didn’t study enough.

“My dad was the one who really loved basketball and he was the one that put the basketball in my hands, and my mom was ’Team Mom’ of all my teams,” he said. “I used to play for three or four teams at once and she would just spend her entire afternoon driving me from practice to practice to practice.”

Apolo Ohno (Photo by Ivan Sekretarev/AP)

Federal Way native and record-breaking Winter Olympian Apolo Ohno will be the grand marshal of the 2010 Seafair Torchlight Parade. Festivities start at 7:30 p.m. on July 31. Read the full story

By Lee Xie
Northwest Asian Weekly

Rich Cho

Rich Cho, former assistant general manager (GM) of the Seattle SuperSonics, has been hired to replace Kevin Pritchard as general manager of the Portland Trail Blazers.

Cho, who is the ninth GM in the Trail Blazers’ history, joins the team after spending the past nine seasons as assistant general manager of the Seattle SuperSonics and the Oklahoma City Thunder. Read the full story

By Greg Beacham
The Associated Press

Manny Pacquiao reluctantly will look for another opponent for his next bout after promoter Bob Arum’s deadline for a deal with Floyd Mayweather Jr. passed Saturday without a word from Mayweather.

In the latest improbable twist in the torturous negotiations for the most tantalizing prospective fight in boxing, Arum said Mayweather’s camp simply hasn’t responded to a contract proposal with no obvious points of contention.

Pacquiao already has agreed to extensive drug testing and an equitable split of the earnings from what’s likely to be the richest fight in boxing history.

“Floyd, for whatever reason — and I’m sure he has some valid reason — didn’t want to commit,” Arum said.

Although Arum was careful not to criticize Mayweather, saying the fighter who calls himself Money could take the incredibly lucrative offer at any point in the next week or so, Arum plans to open discussions with Antonio Margarito and Miguel Cotto for a fight with Pacquiao in November.

“(Pacquiao-Mayweather) is dead when we conclude a deal for Manny’s fight in November,” Arum said. “Then we’re contractually bound to that fight, and we would look to do a deal with Floyd for next year. If Floyd emerged and said he wanted to do the fight (in November), then there would be nothing opposed to doing the fight.”

Arum claims he couldn’t wait any longer to start the time-consuming process of putting together a fight for Pacquiao, whose personal schedule has tightened up with his election to congress in his native Philippines this year. Arum said Top Rank needs several months to put together television deals and publicity tours for the bout.

Pacquiao and Mayweather are their sport’s top two stars, and a meeting likely would be worth more than $40 million to each fighter. They’ve discussed a bout for several months since Mayweather’s return from a brief retirement, but haven’t made a deal.

Although he hasn’t spoken directly to Mayweather, Arum believes the former pound-for-pound champion might be reluctant because of the legal woes of Roger Mayweather, his uncle and longtime trainer. Roger Mayweather will go on trial in Las Vegas next month on assault charges stemming from an altercation with a female boxer last year.

“It would be a shame if it didn’t happen, but I don’t think (anybody) should be too harsh on Floyd in this situation,” Arum said. “I would have liked him to communicate, but I really believe that this issue with the uncle has an effect. Putting myself in their shoes, I would feel a lot of reluctance going into this big fight without my trainer, and we’re not going to know what the outcome of this criminal situation is for quite some time.”

Arum also gave a little insight into the murky negotiations, which were conducted with much less public grandstanding than in the rancorous talks during the 2009 holidays, which ended with no deal — and with Pacquiao suing members of the Mayweather camp for insinuating he uses performance-enhancing drugs.

Arum said he never spoke directly to Mayweather, his representatives at Golden Boy Promotions or even Al Haymon, Mayweather’s chief adviser. Instead, Arum spoke solely to HBO Sports president Ross Greenburg, who served as a mediator between Top Rank and Mayweather’s camp.

Mayweather’s camp has been silent throughout the negotiations, with Golden Boy CEO Richard Schaefer even refusing to acknowledge talks were occurring. Haymon never grants interviews or makes public statements about his varied boxing interests.

Mayweather’s official Twitter feed, which usually is overflowing with plugs for his iPhone application, music ventures and charity endeavors, hasn’t been updated since Thursday afternoon.

Although Top Rank informed Greenburg of its deadline — and even tweaked Mayweather by putting a countdown clock on its website — Greenburg and Haymon hadn’t responded by Friday night.

“The fight that we want to do is Mayweather,” Arum said. “We haven’t said anything different, we haven’t acted differently, but Manny has to fight in November. We’re going to proceed with all deliberate speed, but if in the interim Floyd decides that, despite the Roger situation, that he wants to fight Manny, absolutely, that’s the fight we want.”

Pacquiao is unlikely to have much trouble reaching a deal with either of the replacement opponents identified by Arum. since Cotto and Margarito both are fellow Top Rank fighters.

Pacquiao stopped Cotto last November to win the WBO welterweight title in a fairly one-sided fight, but Arum said the rematch would be at super welterweight, where Cotto rejuvenated his career by claiming the WBA title at Yankee Stadium last month. The match also is enticing because Pacquiao could go after a title in his eighth weight class.

While Pacquiao and Cotto would meet either at Cowboys Stadium or in Las Vegas, Arum said Pacquiao might have to fight Margarito in Monterrey, Mexico — which could be a financial boon to both fighters, given Mexico’s lower withholding taxes. Margarito’s suspension in California still hasn’t been lifted after he was caught using illegal hand wraps in a January 2009 bout, essentially making him unable to fight anywhere stateside without an exemption.

Arum scoffed at the notion of matching Pacquiao against Paul Williams, Timothy Bradley or other lesser-known fighters who might be even more deserving of a shot at the world’s best boxers, calling them “free riders” on Pacquiao’s financial muscle.

“Paul Williams is a tremendous fighter, really a great fighter, but he’s never been promoted correctly,” Arum said. “He doesn’t have any following. He can’t sell a ticket. … I’m not going to let anybody have a free ride.”

Bob Hill (Photo from NBA.com)

TOKYO (AP) — The Tokyo Apache of Japan’s professional basketball league has hired former NBA coach Bob Hill.

The 61-year-old held head coaching positions in the NBA with the New York Knicks, Indiana Pacers, San Antonio Spurs, and Seattle SuperSonics. As the head coach of Apache, Hill is the first coach with NBA head coaching experience in Japan’s professional basketball league.

Conor Neu, general manager of the Tokyo Apache, said the signing “demonstrates this organization’s commitment to our fans and players.”

Since departing the NBA after the 2006–2007 season with the Sonics, Hill has trained multiple NBA draft picks, represented the U.S. Basketball Academy in China, and coached with the Shaanxi team in China. ♦

Yen-Hsun Lu

By Chinami Tajika
Northwest Asian Weekly

Taiwanese tennis player Yen-Hsun Lu, ranked 82nd in the world, stunned fans by defeating U.S. player Andy Roddick, ranked seventh, in the Wimbledon tournament. This year, Wimbledon is being held June 21 to July 4.

Yen-Hsun Lu was born in 1983. His father was a live chicken businessman who supplied the birds to butchers and food outlets in Taiwan. Lu grew up watching his father start work at 1 a.m.. Raising chicken was a part of his life. “I can show you,” Lu said, smiling, in an interview. “Yeah, serious. I can catch a chicken.” Read the full story

By Jocelyn Chui
Northwest Asian Weekly

It’s with a heavy heart that I tell you that South Korea and Japan, the only two Asian teams left standing in the World Cup, were eliminated from the round of 16 teams this week. This is on top of the upset last week when the United States lost to Ghana. Read the full story

By Jocelyn Chui
Northwest Asian Weekly

Image by NWAW staff

The World Cup has been going on for two weeks, and the Asian teams have experienced plenty of ups and downs.

South Korea advances to the next stage

With four points, Korea Republic (South Korea) earned second place in group B and will be advancing to the round of 16, a knockout competition with 16 teams remaining. Korea Republic will play against Uruguay this Saturday. Read the full story

By Jason Cruz
Northwest Asian Weekly

Harvard's Jeremy Lin (4) drives by Boston College’s Biko Paris, left, during the first half of an NCAA college basketball game in Boston at the end of last year. Could Lin be a new face in the NBA? (Photo by Elise Amendola/AP)

Harvard education. NBA skills. Jeremy Lin has both.

Lin, a 6′3”, 200-pound point guard, is training in anticipation of the NBA draft next Thursday, June 24. Lin, a Taiwanese American, would be rare in a league dominated by white and Black players.

“Jeremy loved soccer and basketball even before the age of 5. He would go to all of his older brother’s practices and just do the drills on the sideline by himself. When he was in the fourth grade, we realized that YMCA basketball was no longer challenging for him, so we started looking for higher level basketball leagues,” said Lin’s mother, Shirley.

Lin’s parents immigrated to the United States from Taiwan. They are both computer engineers. Lin’s father, Gie-Ming, is a huge basketball fan and shared this love with his three sons. When Jeremy began playing Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) basketball, Shirley and Gie-Ming realized that Jeremy had a talent. Even with talent, Shirley doesn’t forget the hard work and effort that her son has put in since he was young in order to one day play in the NBA. Read the full story