It's a shame he got hurt playing WBC baseball. No one ever gets hurt playing spring training baseball

Yes, he could have broken his thumb carrying an air conditioner or playing paddleball on the beach.

But that's just not the way people's minds work. Expect a rising chorus of "the WBC is too risky" declamations.

OK, that does it! No more World Baseball Classic! Why, all of the superstars are dropping like flies! We can't afford to lose all these players...especially in this economy!*

1) Cancel all games where players can get hurt, including the WBC, pre-season, post-season and regular season games.
2) Don't even let them practice, cuz guys get hurt in practice, too. (Any man who so much as picks up a bat or a ball gets sentenced to 99 years, without a fair trial.)
3) Enclose all players in bubble wrap and keep them in a freeze-dried location somewhere in the Southwest.
4) Profit!

*Actually, isn't it always "this economy", just like it's always "times like these"...?

As disappointed as I am that Altuve was injured, I'm really sick of fans calling these games "meaningless" and ######## every time someone is injured. I'll guarantee the chance to put on the Venezuela uniform and play was not "meaningless" to Altuve, and if it's good enough for him, then it's good enough for me. Injuries happen in sports. I've really enjoyed the WBC games and enjoy the tournament. Earth keeps spinning.

*Actually, isn't it always "this economy", just like it's always "times like these"...?

You ain't kidding.

#4, yup. The best in-person baseball experience I've had was the 2017 WBC semis and final in person there in San Diego. Not one player on any side was treating those games as exhibitions, and the crowds, wow, what a loud and engaged improvement over passive scoreboard-prompted-if-then MLB crowds. No more of this nonsense about which fans are most into the game, St Louis or Boston or whatever. It's Puerto Rico or Japan or possibly DR, and probably moreso for the Latin American teams there in Miami. The quality of play is totaly worth cheering for.

I think of all the players on these teams that have never won anything. Arenado and Goldschmidt are hall of famers and likely will never win a World Series. I think they are loving this. And as a Cards fan I love to see my guys playing meaningful games.

The Japan v Korea game drew more TV viewers than any World Series game ever played. That sums up which is more important.

#6. Come on. You're comparing fans at a national representation event against, what, a Tuesday in April in St. Louis?

The chipset is the logic that interfaces with the processor to control the system. The processor is the component that actually performs the calculations and operations required to run the system. Elliot

As disappointed as I am that Altuve was injured, I'm really sick of fans calling these games "meaningless" and ######## every time someone is injured. I'll guarantee the chance to put on the Venezuela uniform and play was not "meaningless" to Altuve, and if it's good enough for him, then it's good enough for me. Injuries happen in sports. I've really enjoyed the WBC games and enjoy the tournament. Earth keeps spinning.

Definitely not meaningless. Japan still has to beat Mexico, but we are one game away from realizing my dream scenario from the outset of these games: Trout and Ohtani both playing in a championship game. Probably the only time Angel fans will ever get to see that.

With the luck of the Angels, Ohtani will probably feel something snap in his elbow, in mid-pitch to Trout, altering the trajectory of the ball headed straight to Trout’s wrist.

With the luck of the Angels, Ohtani will probably feel something snap in his elbow, in mid-pitch to Trout, altering the trajectory of the ball headed straight to Trout’s wrist.

Exactly my nightmare scenario, too.

TrAdition.

Trout v. Ohtani in the final would be like Neymar v. Messi in the World Cup Final.

It is not exactly the same thing, but when I see Europeans going nuts about an NFL regular season game (often not a very good matchup, FWIW) in London or Munich, I don't devalue their enthusiasm - it is awesome for the NFL, and the sport of football. (I also get many of those fans are Americans taking a cool vacation.)

But the WBC matters way more for baseball fans in Cuba, the Dominican Republican, Puerto Rico, Mexico, Japan, Venezuela, etc than any NFL game matters to Europeans, because it is their national pastime.

Honestly, is there any doubt, in 2023, that baseball is more of a national passion in many of these countries than it is in America?

When I was 21 years old, I spent several months traveling around Europe (this was 1995), and my buddy and I spent a lot of time in Central Europe. This was only five or six years after the Berlin Wall fell, and in a lot of these countries, once you got out of the center of the country's biggest cities, it got pretty rugged, pretty quickly. The poverty ten miles outside of the center of Prague, or Budapest, or Krakow, was pretty stark.

Well, we make our way to former Yugoslavia, where the Balkan War was still going on in certain parts, but where Slovenia was (by then) safe. Ljubljana is the capital, and a gorgeous city - and in 1995, a couple of 21 year old American guys walking around stood out. It was a Saturday morning, and we got something to eat, and sat on a park bench looking towards an elementary school playground. It had a pair of basketball hoops, about 60 feet apart.

All of a sudden, a big group of teenagers come right up to us, and one of them spoke fluent English.

Them: "You American?"
Us: "Yeah, from sort of near Boston."
Them: "Celtics?"
Us:"Yeah, Boston like the Celtics!"
Them: "You play basketball?"
Us: "Yeah, sometimes."
Them: "Are you really good at basketball?"
Us: "I mean, we are OK."
Them: "You are American - you are very good at basketball, no?"
Us: "I don't know about very good, but...".
Them: "Shaquille O'Neal!"
Us: "No, we are not good like Shaquille O'Neal."
Them: "I bet you are excellent - you have sneakers on! You play with us!"

Then he speaks Slovenian to the other boys, except for "Shaquille O'Neal", and they get all riled up, picking teams, the two of us getting split up so as to "keep it fair".

For the next 20 minutes or so, we played full-court basketball with these kids, who were actually pretty good, and absolutely adored the sport. We had to go, but we thanked them for making us play - it was a lot of fun. I mean, playing basketball is fun, but the real awesomeness was sharing their joy for the sport.

When I see the passion and joy other countries express playing baseball or basketball, I realize that this is an opportunity for America to shine, and to bring people and cultures closer together. Crapping all over other countries' fans because they love baseball (or basketball, or football)? What's the point of crapping on other people's joy...especially over something your own country created? It'd be a little bit like making an awesome dessert for your dinner guests, and when they gush about how delicious it is, you tell them to bring it down a notch. WTF?

steve

i think that is because us americans don't have an actual real team in anything. we are supposed to be "united" states but i think we are all a bunch of states that aren't really united about real too much. i disbelieve there is any national sport like some countries have, except crapping all over other countries' fans, that is.

but there has to be some kind of national identity for us because foreigners can always seem to spot americans of any ethnic persuasion (i mean after like the first generation) even if we haven't actually spoken to them

i disbelieve there is any national sport like some countries have

Sadly, there is one, and it's (US) football.

Yep, last year was the lowest rating for the Super Bowl in decades and it was like a 36 share. The list of most-watched TV is almost all NFL games. Super Bowl Sunday is basically a holiday now, and the league has been indestructible despite its many scandals.

i know folks who watch the superbowl who don't know a football from a soccer ball. Some for the party, some for betting, some for the party about the betting. But they are not exactly football FANS. i think votto is right about the SBS being basically a national holiday with most stores still open.

in mah not so umble opinyin, a whole lot of people who have the daily football game ON are doing it for the betting. nobody who watches/bets on football cares about the so-called "scandals" as long as the players just keep on smashing into each other anyway. so they use steroids. so they do drugs. so they rape people. so they shoot people. like, so what. people just like the violence

(p.s. - this year i did watch the pros play a game where they play flag football. the players, NOT wearing padded unis or helmets so that they look like human beings instead of stormtroopers, appeared to be having a blast. so i would guess that since there was no violence and the players looked like they having a good time, not real too many people watched/cared)

there is no american TEAM (i don't care what the dallasites say) like the non-americans soccer teams. i don't think i would say it is a national sport. certainly not like baseball used to be. prolly because it is now so expensive to play as kids that hardly anyone does it. and going to ML game is really expensive even if you don't eat or drink or buy anything there. even when i started blogging almost 20 years ago, when i could get $5 tix from a scalper outside, there was all KINDS of folks in the stands who obviously were not baseball FANS and didn't even watch the game and some of the ones who did had zero idea about any of the simple rules like 3 strikes = out

I'm just spitballing here, but perhaps some fans think differently about injuries that happen doing things other than playing baseball for their team. And when they call the games "meaningless" they mean meaningless *to them*, which is understandable.

The players involved are having none of the "meaningless" talk, so I'll defer to them.

but there has to be some kind of national identity for us because foreigners can always seem to spot americans of any ethnic persuasion (i mean after like the first generation) even if we haven't actually spoken to them

Our national identity is type 2 diabetes.

EDIT: And I say this as an American who does not have diabetes, but my birthday cake was adorned with chocolate fudge frosting and Marshmallow Peeps.

Then he speaks Slovenian to the other boys, except for "Shaquille O'Neal"...

Actually, that is how you say it in Slovenian.

The ("big picture") questions for the WBC are (a) is it growing the global popularity of the game? and (b) if so, is it doing it anywhere outside of the countries where baseball is already popular? DR fan interest in the DR team playing Cuba or the US seems a given but perhaps it does help maintain/grow/solidify baseball in the DR going forward (can't hurt). Do the Italy or Netherlands teams resonate at all in their home countries? It will be interesting to see whether the Aussie run sparks any renewed interest in baseball there -- my impression in my 10 years there was that baseball was declining in popularity. The Aussie league seemed to be barely surviving only because the Korean League (and a smattering of others) were using it as their winter ball.

It is not exactly the same thing, but when I see Europeans going nuts about an NFL regular season game (often not a very good matchup, FWIW) in London or Munich, I don't devalue their enthusiasm - it is awesome for the NFL, and the sport of football. (I also get many of those fans are Americans taking a cool vacation.)

But the WBC matters way more for baseball fans in Cuba, the Dominican Republican, Puerto Rico, Mexico, Japan, Venezuela, etc than any NFL game matters to Europeans, because it is their national pastime.

In 2017 my only wish was that the Yankees would boycott the WBC, since they have enough injuries as it is.

Fast forward to 2023 and I've become a convert, even if I haven't been watching.

What I'd really like to see would be for the next MLB expansion to be in Mexico City and Santo Domingo (or San Juan). Yes, I know that those two cities may not have the requisite number of corporate skyrillionaires to fill all those luxury boxes, but if you priced the tickets to the local market I'd bet you'd be getting near capacity for every game, with the added benefit of bringing some life into the Marlins and Rays games when those two expansion teams visited Florida, or any city with a large Latin American population.

Obviously Tokyo would be ideal in terms of the wealth of its fan base, but the time zone gap would be impossible to get around. And Havana and Caracas are way too volatile politically.

Fast forward to 2023 and I've become a convert, even if I haven't been watching.

Weren't you pretty aggressively anti-WBC in the past? That's quite the turnaround.

. The players involved are having none of the "meaningless" talk, so I'll defer to them.

And you may, and others may not. And that’s ok.

The ("big picture") questions for the WBC are (a) is it growing the global popularity of the game? and (b) if so, is it doing it anywhere outside of the countries where baseball is already popular?.... Do the Italy or Netherlands teams resonate at all in their home countries?

This is what I wonder. Even if it doesn't, the boon the sport gets in the countries where it's already popular is worth it -- the numbers for Korea-Japan were hilariously huge. It would be wonderful if the WBC were able to establish baseball as a truly global sport and that, somewhen down the line, the WBC tournament could acquire the same flavor that the World Cup has.

Weren't you pretty aggressively anti-WBC in the past? That's quite the turnaround.

Very much so, because of the injury factor. But at this point I think with the right sort of approach baseball can reach into Latin America in a Big Way with two expansion teams, as I mentioned above in #24. And though it's a much longer shot, it's possible that baseball interest could even spread into Europe. 30 or 40 years ago, how many European players were in the NBA?

What I'd really like to see would be for the next MLB expansion to be in Mexico City and Santo Domingo (or San Juan).

I also wonder what the ransom demand would be for an entire MLB team.

The ("big picture") questions for the WBC are (a) is it growing the global popularity of the game? and (b) if so, is it doing it anywhere outside of the countries where baseball is already popular?

I suspect it's a long-term project, and my brain isn't really coughing up a lot of information on how good the crowds were in the European qualifiers last fall. I do wonder if maybe in '27, there should be a pool in Europe (UK/Israel/Netherlands/Italy/Chechia?) so that it's played at a reasonable time there. It probably winds up as a too-easy path to the quarterfinals for the honkballers while the Asian one is much more competitive (Japan/Korea/Taiwan/Australia).

I also kind of think it should happen every odd-numbered year, both to keep it from seeming like a weird disruption and to keep interest in those less baseball-obsessed countries up. Just because the Olympics and World Cup happen on a four-year schedule doesn't mean the WBC has to.

I suspect it's a long-term project, and my brain isn't really coughing up a lot of information on how good the crowds were in the European qualifiers last fall. I do wonder if maybe in '27, there should be a pool in Europe (UK/Israel/Netherlands/Italy/Chechia?) so that it's played at a reasonable time there. It probably winds up as a too-easy path to the quarterfinals for the honkballers while the Asian one is much more competitive (Japan/Korea/Taiwan/Australia).

That's true, but it's worth noting that all five European teams in this tournament qualified for the 2026 tournament based on their records this time - the teams relegated to playing in the qualifying rounds were two Asian, and two Latin American teams. I think that counts as a surprise.

I'm done caring about what anyone thinks of the WBC. Last night was quite simply one of the best baseball games I've watched, period.

We're now over two decades on from the launch of MLB.TV in Europe, with Europeans able to grow up watching afternoon games in the evening (and full games and recaps of evening games on demand). Such a big difference from 25 years ago, when, if you were lucky, you'd get a broadcast of ESPN's Sunday night game at 1am local time - and once or twice a year, your favourite team might be on it!

I also stumbled across Rotterdam's honkball arena on an exploration of the city a few weeks ago ( Neptunus Rotterdam). I'm not sure that a North Sea port is the ideal climate, but the park itself looked nice - and there were several dozen players warming up in early March.

I also wanted to note that, having been lurking on this forum for nearly as long as I've been closely following baseball, it's been heartening to see how many people are enjoying at least elements of the WBC after a lot of 'meaningless' talk in the early iterations. Which is not to say that those objections were groundless, either - I still don't think I've ever watched a WBC game - but even just the willingness to re-examine evidence and alter perspectives is rather heartening.

The popularity of the Japan-Korea game suggests the NPB and KBO should start either an annual KBO v NPB "world" series or KBO v NPB all-star series. (For all I know they already do.)

"Meaningless" ... it seems like there was a tipping point there somewhere that we all missed, at least in the US. To a great extent, "meaningless" or not depends on whether it matters to the players. Maybe the US players got inspired by the fervor of the foreign players.

I always find it an interesting concept -- why and how it comes to be "meaningful." For me (as an example), college baseball is 100% meaningless and I went to minor-league games pretty much just to hang out with friends and maybe pay actual attention to the game when the phenom came to bat but certainly had no interest in the score. At the ML level, I'm pretty "serious" about watching the game. But then there's college basketball which I always loved -- it didn't hurt that the first game I ever watched was Notre Dame's huge upset of UCLA, breaking their unbeaten streak.

I can still sorta remember, 25-30 years ago, Valparaiso made a run in the NCAA tourney. Their big win was a last-second shot. A big celebration by the team's top players -- the coach's son (a gym rat), a black kid from Chicago (a gym rat although he may have played on asphalt) and a big kid from Lithiuania. That's awesome -- three different cultures, never met until a year or two before but that game sure meant everything to them and I still remember it because they were so, so happy.

the teams relegated to playing in the qualifying rounds were two Asian, and two Latin American teams. I think that counts as a surprise.

It's kind of a fluke of the tie-breaker rules - Pool A was all 2-2, so Taiwan has to requalify instead of Panama, the Netherlands, Cuba, and Italy (the last two of whom advanced with the same record); Columbia and Great Britain were both 1-3 in Pool C.

The geographically logical way to set things up next year is probably:

Pool A - Netherlands/Italy/UK/Czechia/qualifier, hosted in Italy
Pool B - Japan/Korea/Israel/Australia/qualifier, hosted in Tokyo or Seoul
Pool C - USA/Canada/Panama/Mexico/qualifier, hosted in USA
Pool D - Dominican/Puerto Rico/Venezuela/Cuba/qualifier, probably also hosted in USA

Figure Taiwan is almost certainly going to end up in B, although the hitch comes if Cuba doesn't want to be in the USA until later rounds. I also wonder if there'd be worries about small crowds for Pool A being bad optics.

i think that is because us americans don't have an actual real team in anything. we are supposed to be "united" states but i think we are all a bunch of states that aren't really united about real too much. i disbelieve there is any national sport like some countries have, except crapping all over other countries' fans, that is.

They should have like a Trump team, a right thinkin' person team, and a Ron Paul glibertarian club. Vegetarians vs. meat eaters, too!

[36] Pool A is dogshit. Pool B is a bit better; Korea could get upset again. Pool C is a fine mix of talent. Pool D is loaded af- their fourth best team (Cuba) is on par with the Netherlands who are the class of Pool A. Your idea of geographical balancing would be a disaster for competition.

I mean, yeah, I know, but it's not like the WBC is entirely about perfectly balanced competition. If part of the idea is to build baseball in places where it's got room to grow, you don't necessarily want a country's team exclusively playing at 1am or the like. MLB clearly wants to expand their footprint in Europe and other territories, and you've got to come to them rather than expecting them to come to you.