Feb. 17, 2006

The real World Series of baseball

By KEELEM OSGOOD
klo009@marietta.edu

At one point, baseball was known as the American pastime. Nowadays, it seems like baseball is not so much the American pastime, but the Latin American pastime.

With about 90% of players in the MLB calling a foreign nation home, it’s about time the United States offered other countries the opportunity to play against them for real. So that’s exactly what they did.

This year marks the first in what hopes to be many that multiple countries from around the globe come together to play a little ball. Since the olympics officially banned both baseball and softball from their summer games, it only seems right that the MLB step up and set things straight.

The United States is just one of sixteen teams taking part in the tournament this spring. The remaining fifteen teams are from: Australia, Canada, China, Chinese Taipei, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Italy, Japan, Korea, Mexico, the Netherlands, Panama, Puerto Rico, South Africa, and Venezuela. That marks at least one representative for each of the six inhabitable continents.

There was a lot of debate over whether or not to allow Cuba to play in the WBC since their diplomatic relationships with other countries aren’t exactly the greatest. The commission behind the Classic felt that it was better to give them a slot because at the end of the day it’s about baseball, not politics.

The WBC is set up with in a bracket system; each team is in a pool with three other teams, making four pools of four. Games will be played in the United States, Japan, and Puerto Rico. The WBC runs from Friday, March 3rd through Thursday, March 30th.