I loved the first WBC in 2006 and the 2009 version blew it out of the water. Outside of games played by Team USA, the baseball was generally terrific, fun to watch and managed quite a bit of drama. The Netherlands story (and the games they won in the opening round) were legendary and I’m glad I got to see them. Korea, Japan, Cuba, Venezuela and Puerto Rico (and well the US too, but more on that later (and the DR would have been too, if they had decided to show up) ) were all excellent baseball teams that played generally high quality, entertaining baseball at a very high level.
The problem? There is/was/probably always be too much focus on how many of the teams/players aren’t read to play and are worried about getting injured. Stop it. Please. These players are highly paid, world class athletes – I will never buy the idea that they “can’t” get ready for this tournament once every 4 years because it’s played to early in March. I will, however, buy the idea that they won’t. And I’m aware that injury certainly is a risk, especially consider the “highly paid” statement above. Can I understand a guy or an organization saying “geez, this could cost millions if something goes wrong?” Sure. But if it doesn’t have value in spite of the risk, why even have the thing?
And the biggest problem with the injury/timing talk? Its almost completely leveled at team USA. And they are the team losing players at a higher rate, because they’re not willing to play through the minor injuries that aren’t even going to get reported when they happen on teams like Japan, Korea and Cuba. And that’s too bad, because I can see how that would just suck the interest out of a casual fan that wanted to root for the US team. It got almost painful to listen to broadcasters constantly talking about the players that were dropping out, who had what nagging injury, and constant discussions about how to make the timing of the event to lessen worry about injury and have players that were more prepared. My solution, stop talking about it.
Seriously, that’s it. Just talk about the games. That talk magically disappeared during the championship game last night. Why was that? Because it was Japan and Korea, two teams generally thought by most media outlets to consider the WBC a huge international event that was important both to the teams and the countries. Well, guess what. Broadcast all the games like that, and fans might think its important to Team USA and American baseball fans. Just a minor rant. That is all.
