It has been three years since the United States has been in the World Baseball Classic
Joe Ray
– Staff Writer –
It has been three years since the United States has been in the World Baseball Classic.
Last year, the team was knocked out of the second round of the WBC by the team of Mexico.
“Baseball is America’s game, it doesn’t belong to the Italians or the Cubans or the Koreans or the Japanese,” said Tommy Lasorda, who has been part of the Dodgers organization for more than 40 years.
“It’s our game, and we’re not going to let them beat us,” Lazorda said.
This year’s team wanted to prove to the world that they were different from last time.
This year’s coach was Davey Johnson, who hasn’t coached baseball since 2000, when he was fired from the Los Angeles Dodgers.
He has also coached for the New York Mets, Cincinnati Reds, and the Baltimore Orioles. They failed to make the final game of the World Baseball Classic and lost to the Reigning WBC Champions Japan.
The United States showed they were a team when they beat Puerto Rico in the quarterfinals with a dramatic two to one victory in the late innings by a David Wright single.
There was some criticism about the way the U.S. handled the WBC, one player in particular spoke out about how he felt about the event.
According to The Atlanta Journal Constitution, Chipper Jones said he won’t play again if the format isn’t changed.
“Just way too many days off,” stated Jones in the article. “We stayed in Toronto for a week and played three games. I don’t know if you ever stayed in Toronto, but it’s not exactly Las Vegas. To say that we were plucking our eyebrows out one at a time would be an understatement.”
The AJC also stated that Chipper Jones, feeling a bit dumb due to a strained oblique he suffered during the WBC, said that the week he stayed in Toronto reminded him of several prostate examinations in quick succession.
There were many clubs that felt it was too much, too quick to have their franchise pitchers risking their health playing with the WBC, since they wouldn’t be taking a slow pace to get ready for the baseball season.
There were many things that the WBC wants to change for the next turnaround in 2012.
There have been many ideas that have been tossed around.
One of them is increasing the number of teams from 16 teams to 32 teams.
Another suggestion was moving the WBC to the middle of the year, where teams would have some experience and the games would be more exciting and that it would happen during the week of the All-Star break.
The 37.8 television rating during the WBC was the best rating in Japan since the Beijing Olympics and was compared to being the Super bowl for Japan.
The WBC was an exciting event at times, showing a small team like the Netherlands can come from behind and beat the Dominican Republic, a team that was thought to win it all.
The WBC showed some future, but still needs to make a lot of changes if they want to make this a promising event.
