This is 13-year-old first baseman Nagiru Hiramatsu, who is representing Japan in the Little League World Series. His favorite singer, as identified by ESPN during a recent broadcast, is "Wandai Wrection." Huh? I believe young Nagiru meant One Direction, one of the most popular boy bands in the world. Oops.
I suppose that's better than "Sum Ting Wong."
The working theory is that some beleaguered (and/or lazy) ESPN producer dropped the ball, failed to decipher the kid's Japanese accent, and didn't bother to verify the name. Others think that Nagiru himself misidentified and misspelled the name of his favorite band, and ESPN just went with it.
I don't quite buy either of those explanations. I'm guessing some smartass at the controls was messing around and decided to play a screenshot-worthy practical joke. Those Japanese sure do talk funny, don't they?
By the way, if anyone is looking for a name for their totally awesome One Direction cover band... here you go.
Source: Japanese Little Leaguer's Favorite Singer Is "Wandai Wrection."
UPDATE: According to the Asian American Journalists Association, ESPN acknowledged the mistake and apologized to Nagiru. It appears the whole thing stemmed from a translator transcription error that failed to get caught along the chain:
ESPN did the right thing Monday night by quickly acknowledging the error during the broadcast and by later apologizing to the teen in the locker room.
“It should have been caught,” Jackson Davis, ESPN’s director of diversity, told MediaWatch during a phone conversation.
During Little League broadcasts, the children are often asked an assortment of questions, some of which make it to on-air graphics that allow viewers to learn more about the players.
"Our goal is to always get things correct right out of the gate," Davis said. “When something like this occurs, we try to get to the bottom of it.”
As Davis describes it, something clearly went wrong during translation.
When Hiramatsu named his favorite singer, a translator transcribed his response as "Wandai Wrection." No one caught the spelling error as the information passed through the usual chain, including inputting into a graphics generator.
“That information was loaded verbatim … and it was not checked very well, obviously,” Davis acknowledged.
More here: ESPN apologizes, gives straight answer for "One Direction" flub.