In Praise of the World Baseball Classic

Today I write to encourage everyone to watch and support the World Baseball Classic. For those who did not even know that it is going on, let me tell you that it is and it is awesome. Let's go over all of the necessary ingredients for a successful international tournament and see how the WBC does. In our comparison we will use the World Cup as the benchmark for international tournament greatness.

1. First and foremost, the citizens of all (or at least most) of the countries involved must care about the tournament games. Almost everything else follows from this first key factor. Obviously, the World Cup is off the charts in this category. Well, except for in the US. But in every other country, the citizens care passionately about the World Cup games. On the other end of the spectrum, you have something like Olympic basketball in the 1990's. Back then pretty much only the US and maybe Greece cared. I think the WBC ranks pretty highly here. I haven't gotten a sense yet this time around, but during the first WBC, all of the countries were into it. Japan, Cuba, Venezuela, the DR - all those guys had great fan support.

2. The players have to care, and care enough to actually play. This should follow from #1. If the fans care, the players will care. Again, the World Cup ranks first here, although maybe the Olympics are tied for first b/c every non-pro olympic athlete really cares about being there. After the Dream Team, Olympic basketball suffered a huge fall off in players caring. They couldn't even get the best US NBA players to go, until we started getting our asses whiped by Angola and Dhijbouti. Now the care factor is back up, which may or may not last. In the first year of the WBC, it seemed like the participation and care factors were really good, especially for the Asian and Latin teams. It looks like it's fallen off a little this year, but still pretty good.

3. An open, competitive, diverse field. This is what hurts the olympics. In most of the sports, there are only a few countries who can compete. Skiing is dominated by the northern European countries, gymastics is US/China/Russia, Swimming is US/Australia, and no one can hang with the Canadians in curling. The World Cup is good here but not great. The field is certainly diverse, and pretty open and competitive, but it always comes down to the same countries at the end. The WBC field is a little narrow due to the lack of Europeans and Africans, but the competitiveness is great. The US, Japan, Venezuela, the DR or Cuba could all win it.

What else am I missing? I think those are the big ones, and the WBC does well in all of them. As in the World Cup, I root for the teams whose fans care the most and for those that a win would mean the most. Thus I will be pulling for something like a Cuba/Venezuela final. Wait a minute - does make me some kind of a commie?