The View From 103

I had started an article on the World Baseball Classic
when my DSL connection completely went to hell. Now that I have a great internet connection, I can begin writing again.

The World Baseball Classic is something that should have been attempted forty years ago. Baseball is not as universally played as soccer, but its much more international in scope than my friends from Europe think. It's roots are in the USA, but pound for pound the best players are from Caribbean and Latin America. Bush and Castro disagree on most everything, but both of them are serious baseball fans.

Baseball's star has been steadily rising in Asia. Japan's baseball roots in Japan go back a century. The sport is popular in Korea and Taiwan. And it's growing in China, whose government has made it a priority to become more competitive in international baseball. They think its a clean sport, which proves that they've never heard of Barry Bonds and his bag of tricks.

Baseball is not a big sport in Europe, but the Dutch and Italians, though they're already been eliminated, absolutely did not embarrass themselves.

The competition began with 16, divided into four brackets. Two teams will advance from each bracket after the first round, half of these teams will be eliminated in round two, then four teams will advance to San Diego, where there will be three single-elimination games to determine the champion.

Tomorrow, some comments on the field and on the competition so far.

Posted by The Phantom on Saturday, March 11, 2006 at 5:16 AM | Permalink