The Korea Times Does Not Mince Words

In U.S. papers, when a player stinks, no one ever seems to want to come out and say it, preferring instead to talk about how hard they're working, how they're battling injuries, etc. Even the New York tabloids rarely say "player x is washed up." They just trash the guy's character or, alternatively, deify the guy if he gives good quote.

The Korea Times, however, doesn't beat around the bush. It is perfectly frank in assessing the prospects of the Korean national team, particularly with respect to the quality of Koreans playing baseball in the U.S. Chan Ho-Park is "more washed up than a dead shell on a beach," and is "allergic to strikes." Jae-weong Seo is "forever a standard-bearer for mediocrity."

I suppose that if a U.S. beat writer started writing stuff like that all the time he'd pretty quickly lose access to the players he most wanted to write about, but until that happened it would be fun trying to come up with new ways to describe poor play.