In front of a rowdy crowd on Monday night, the World Baseball Classic crowned it's second championship. In extra innings Japan, behind Seattle Mariners All-Star Ichiro Suzuki, knocked off rival South Korea 5-3.
So why does it seem like no one noticed? The tournament is far from perfect, but I know it gave me chills when David Wright put the USA in the semi's in walk-off fashion. The passion just is not there like it is in competing countries.
This is a discussion that could go on for a long, long time, but here are a few problems that need to be addressed for the United States:
Where's the pitching?
No offense to Roy Oswalt and Jake Peavy, but the American pitching in the WBC was awful. The other Pitchers to start games for USA were Ted Lilly and Jeremy Guthrie, with guys like Roy Halladay and C.C. Sabathia not participating.
More importantly, the pitchers need to be ready. If you watched one game you could see that the hurlers were nowhere near being in-shape.
What's going on?
Simplify this tournament, please. I still have no idea how team's advance and until I heard the words "semi-finals," it was next to impossible to know what a win meant.
There are so many games played that seem no to matter that the average fan has no idea what is going on. Less round robin, please.
Is it still going on?
It's too easy to lose track of what's going on, with too few games spread out over too long. Tighten up the scheduling and play more back to back days.
All in all, I really enjoyed the WBC and look forward to 2012. The reality is that it will not be the big event it deserves to be unless baseball decides that it is more important than the regular season. I do not see that happening anytime soon.
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