After spending a week and a half with Team Italy, I am home again and am beginning to collect my thoughts on the World Baseball Classic. Highlights from my trip include meeting Curtis Granderson (one of my favorite players), watching Italy beat Canada in Toronto, and being in the press box to hear Peter Gammons leave a voicemail for Scott Boras.

Other baseball people I met include Mike Piazza, Mike Hargrove, Tom Trebelhorn, Jeff Conine, Omar Minaya, and Jeremy Guthrie. I rode an elevator at the Rogers Centre with Larry Walker and Justin Morneau, who were heading to a Toronto Maple Leafs game after Team Canada’s loss to the United States in the opening game. At various points I found myself just a few feet away from Derek Jeter, Dustin Pedroia, Chipper Jones, and Andres Galarraga.

Continue reading "Back from the WBC; first thoughts"

I don’t know what the players on most of the World Baseball Classic teams were thinking during the tournament, but the players on Team Italy really wanted to win.  The WBC wasn’t spring training for most of them, like it was for the United States.  I’m not suggesting the Americans did not try as hard as everyone else, but each of Team U.S.’s players knew he had a great job to go back to when the WBC was over.  Some of the players on the Italian roster, by contrast, were auditioning for big-league or even minor league jobs.

One of the purposes of the WBC is to generate interest in baseball in other countries where the game is not as popular in the hopes of developing young athletes into major league ballplayers.  The biggest success stories in this regard were the victories by the Italians and the Dutch.  While Italy stunned (and eliminated) Canada in their first round matchup, the Netherlands shocked the entire baseball world by beating the Dominican Republic not once but twice, and nearly beating Puerto Rico as well.  The Dominicans clearly did not play their best baseball, but the Dutch deserve a lot of credit.  Even after falling behind in the top of the 11th inning of their elimination game, the Netherlands came back to score two runs in the bottom of the 11th to move on to Round 2 of the WBC.

Continue reading "WBC thoughts from an inside perspective"