World Baseball Classic
Let me just tell you something straight up, I love international sports competitions. To me there is nothing better than the all star teams breaking up and going to play for their respective nations. Sometimes this leads to the star player from some pissass country being the only star on a terrible team, or to super-powered teams of gods. But there is nothing better in sports than representing your nation.
This lead me to watch much of the World Baseball Classic. This is the brand new, MLB run international tournament in baseball. I don't care about domestic baseball too much. I follow the Red Sox somewhat, but there are too many games and too much means too little. And the Yankees are a vile sin. But this Classic was very fun to watch. With four opening round robin brackets with some rather unique matchups, to some second round surprises and ultimately a deserving winner beating a baseball superpower. I enjoyed watching South Africa vs Canada in the first round, as it was rather obscure. But you could see professionals from a developing nation that has no pro leagues taking on MLB superstars and actually giving them a run for their money. Watching the underdog Korean team go undefeated into the semis was cool. Nobody expected anything from them. And in the end it was Team Japan vs Team Cuba in a great final.
This is the real baseball, this is playing with passion. The people knew it as they sold out many games. Every Puerto Rico game was a sellout, which shows the Puerto Rican commitment to this sport. You don't see the sort of passion displayed here from the players that often. Sure the USA team was pretty much a bunch of Yankees who couldn't care less, but that's why they lost. They lacked passion. They beat jobber teams that didn't matter (and Japan), but they didn't have the passion to compete against teams who really had their hearts in it. Mexico had nothing to gain from beating the US team, but they had their pride on the line. They played as if it were the championship game and crushed the US. Good. We needed that little bit of humbling. International sports are about passion and pride, not money.
By all estimates this was a major success, despite what those damn Yankees thought. The Yankees tried to stop the internationalizing of baseball (I mean this literally), but they clearly failed. Merchandise sales exceeded total expectations in a matter of days. Certain games had three times projected viewers despite being taped and put on in terrible time slots. Crowds were much larger than expected, with a number of sellouts. There will be more Classics, and they will be bigger. This is the sporting event of baseball's future, a true world tournament.
Congratulations to Team Japan on becoming the real world champions of baseball.
This lead me to watch much of the World Baseball Classic. This is the brand new, MLB run international tournament in baseball. I don't care about domestic baseball too much. I follow the Red Sox somewhat, but there are too many games and too much means too little. And the Yankees are a vile sin. But this Classic was very fun to watch. With four opening round robin brackets with some rather unique matchups, to some second round surprises and ultimately a deserving winner beating a baseball superpower. I enjoyed watching South Africa vs Canada in the first round, as it was rather obscure. But you could see professionals from a developing nation that has no pro leagues taking on MLB superstars and actually giving them a run for their money. Watching the underdog Korean team go undefeated into the semis was cool. Nobody expected anything from them. And in the end it was Team Japan vs Team Cuba in a great final.
This is the real baseball, this is playing with passion. The people knew it as they sold out many games. Every Puerto Rico game was a sellout, which shows the Puerto Rican commitment to this sport. You don't see the sort of passion displayed here from the players that often. Sure the USA team was pretty much a bunch of Yankees who couldn't care less, but that's why they lost. They lacked passion. They beat jobber teams that didn't matter (and Japan), but they didn't have the passion to compete against teams who really had their hearts in it. Mexico had nothing to gain from beating the US team, but they had their pride on the line. They played as if it were the championship game and crushed the US. Good. We needed that little bit of humbling. International sports are about passion and pride, not money.
By all estimates this was a major success, despite what those damn Yankees thought. The Yankees tried to stop the internationalizing of baseball (I mean this literally), but they clearly failed. Merchandise sales exceeded total expectations in a matter of days. Certain games had three times projected viewers despite being taped and put on in terrible time slots. Crowds were much larger than expected, with a number of sellouts. There will be more Classics, and they will be bigger. This is the sporting event of baseball's future, a true world tournament.
Congratulations to Team Japan on becoming the real world champions of baseball.
