World Baseball Classic

While I consider baseball to be one of the most mundane sports known to man, I find it necessary to comment on the second ever World Baseball Classic that begun this past Friday. For those of you that don't know, the WBC is a worldwide baseball tournament made up of 16 international teams that have qualified over the past three years. These 16 teams are broken up into four groups and the top two teams from each will advance. From here the remaining teams play in single elimination games to deterime a Champion.

To me the WBC is just a poor man's version of the World Cup of Soccer. The format, the teams, and the method of qualification are basically the same for both of these events. The biggest difference is that very few people actually care about the World Baseball Classic. While the entire world stops for the phenomenon that is the World Cup of Soccer, very few people care to tune into the WBC other than a few die hard baseball fans. Its actually pathetic how little interest there is in this tournament. Only a few thousand people fill stadiums that seat nearly 50,000 people. The teams are also so unevenly matched. Teams like the United States, Venezuela, and Japan are destroying other teams. The games are just not exciting and the tournament is not obtaining worldwide excitment like it was planning on doing.

Perhaps the biggest problem with the WBC is that so many professional players are getting injured and are wearing themselves out. The MLB is unlike any other sports league in the world. Because professional baseball players play in an unprecedented 162 game season these players really cannot afford to play in an addition 15 games before the season even starts. Its unfair for the teams who these players play for and the fans that pay to watch their athletes play at an optimal level.

Personally I think that baseball is wasting its time putting so much time and money into globalizing the game. Teams are already struggling financially in this country and the MLB should be focusing in helping out its teams in this country rather than spending to build the game in other countries. This is just my opinion though. Let me know what you think about the WBC and if we should continue having one in the future.