MY APOLOGIES FOR NOT HAVING IT IN ALL CAPS

I don't have a good handle on this group of teams but Nicaragua/Colombia seems like it should be a decent matchup.

I don't have a good handle on this group of teams but Nicaragua/Colombia seems like it should be a decent matchup.

Yeah, it's a 2-3 matchup. I'd say Colombia has the advantage, but if Brazil can beat Panama, Nicaragua can definitely beat Colombia.

I saw "Brazil 3, Panama 2" and was wondering why we had a thread about soccer World Cup qualifiers. Then I thought, "I'm kinda surprised that Panama kept it that close." Then I realized what this was really about and I thought, "WTF WTF WTF WTF WTF WTF WTF"

Brazil!
Wish I could stay up for two games tonight, but that would just be greedy.

I get the feeling that that'll be it for Brazil, though. They used all of their good pitchers last night, probably. Of course, that was something of the point: they wanted to prove they belonged by winning a game, and they have shown that. Anything after this will be icing on the cake. It'll be interesting to see how Brazil develops in the coming years as MLB and some Japan teams start to tap into it more.

I mean, consider: it's a large country where a lot of people play sports. If you could convince even a small portion of good-but-not-great Brazilian athletes people that they have a better chance of being Yan Gomes than they ever would have of becoming Kaka or Neymar or whoever, it'd be a great source of talent.

Sort of like how Australia has provided a good number of ballplayers who are good athletes but just aren't elite players in Australia's more popular sports, and how Canada has provided plenty of players to MLB who just weren't very good at Hockey, or who realized their ceiling in baseball was higher than in hockey.

MLB-experienced Players who might be playing tonight in Colombia-Nicaragua (if memory serves)

Colombia: Edgar Renteria, Jolbert Cabrera, Luis Martinez, the Solano brothers
Nicaragua: Everth Cabrera, Erasmo Ramirez

Sadly, I'll probably miss the start of it :(

I get the feeling that that'll be it for Brazil, though.

Concur. Getting the one win is huge.
Typing as a Canadian who played a bunch of baseball 'til college & never got any minutes on ice, opportunity can be a powerful motivator.

Looks like Colombia has had a heck of a start.

Rain delay currently at an hour and a half for the New Zealand/Phillipines game, and Weather Channel forecasts rain till approx. 1am there. Would expect both games to move to tomorrow...

After a 4.5 hour rain delay, the New Zealand/Phillipines game has started, and of course now I need to head to bed...