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I am excited , I mean really excited, about the World Baseball Classic, that is happening in two weeks. Yes, it is sort of lousy execution (Like, the tournament scheduled in March?) and a cash cow and hyped promotion (the cap cost whopping $35 plus $5 shipping, and I do not believe anyone, especially the players who are in the commercial, likes that face-painted-in-your-country-color commercial, its creepy…) but if you can see beyond that, it is a really good idea. Good for baseball. At least good for someone like me.
Here is my take on it. I hear that some people are thinking this as a exhibition games, but if you think so, I think team Japan is going to kick some butt. Not only Japanese team is collection of aces and clean-up hitters, they have a lot to prove. In fact majority of the players, such as third baseman Akinori Iwamura, pitchers Hirotoshi Ishii, Hiroki Kuroda, are likely to consider switch to the Majors as early as next season (2007) and Daisuke Matsuzaka, Koji Uehara are rumored to be considered the switch to the majors in near future (when they become eligible). So this is a awesome opportunity to strikeout Alex Rodriguez and hit homerun off of Roger Clemens to catch the scouts eye. I like the team Japan’s pitching, and even not complete (I would have liked to see Hideki Matsui and Kenji Johjima be on the team…) the offense is not bad… led by Ichiro and Nobuhiko Matsunaka, especially the outfielder depth is pretty amazing, some of the benched players will be best hitters. I am assuming japan will win the pool A and US will win the pool B, and go ahead and purchased the ticket to see them play in Anaheim. It will be awesome.
Since this blog has been not updated at all lately, I am going to use this space to update some of the news and my take on this inagual WBC. Here is my del.icio.us link to all thing WBC. Go team Japan!
