The WBC Can Be A Classic
By Michael Avallone | Pro Baseball Central | on Thursday, March 9 2006

If you look at it in black and white, the 16-team World Baseball Classic is an excellent initiative. The idea by Commissioner Bud Selig, the concept of having the best players in the world represent their countries in a two-week tournament patterned after soccer's World Cup, is intriguing. It’s an idea that has been toyed around with for some time, and after the Olympics decided to drop baseball for the 2012 games, it took on even greater importance in Selig’s mind.

His 16-year tenure as the head of baseball has seen its share of good and bad. The sport has ushered in the highly successful – yet originally panned – wild-card format, interleague play, a slew of new ballparks and realignments. Plus revenue sharing has helped some of the smaller market teams survive and compete. Then again Selig has also butchered an All-Star game, had steroids become the focus of the game and canceled a World Series.

Just how the fans in the United States will accept the WBC is yet to be determined. It is almost certain that the excitement of these games may be far greater in other parts of the world, where international competition is honored and respected, than here in the states. With 92 Dominican-born players in the Majors, it is quite possible that winning the tournament will mean more to those fans should the Dominican Republic triumph.

And the excitement of the WBC was clearly evident in Tokyo, where 40,553 showed up to watch in disbelief as Korea stunned Japan, 3-2, on Sunday in the Pool A final. Chan Ho Park got the save for Korea, which is on its way to Arizona to play exhibition games against the Royals and the Padres in Peoria before the second-round begins.

Initial response to the idea was positive. It looked like almost all of the great players wanted to represent their countries…then reality set in. The games were being played at a time when players were just starting to get in game shape. They were just beginning to throw and had concerns over injuries. Several owners – most notably George Steinbrenner – didn't want his players participating because that's not what he was paying them for.

The problem with the WBC now is that far too many players have backed out, leaving doubts as to how good the tournament will be. Pedro Martinez, Randy Johnson, Curt Schilling, Manny Ramirez, Vladamir Guerrero, Sammy Sosa, Billy Wagner, Mark Prior, Mark Mulder, Jose Vidro, Tim Hudson, Melvin Mora, Barry Zito, Hideki Matsui, Barry Bonds, Gary Sheffield, CC Sabathia and John Smoltz, are all out. How good can a tournament be without those players?

Alex Rodriguez couldn't decide for whom he was going to play – the USA or Dominican Republic – even though he was born in the United States. Mike Piazza was also born in the U.S. but is playing for Italy. So the rules are a little too flexible for players, further stirring some criticism.

Those who want the World Baseball Classic to fail say it is a bunch of glorified exhibition games. And to a certain extent, they are right. There is a pitch count, mercy rules in place, and – this is a no-no in baseball – games could end in a tie. Still, the WBC is good promotion for the sport on a global basis. It can help grow the sport, especially with so many major league players now coming from foreign countries. While that is surely a positive, detractors counter with a solid point of their own. Countries like the Dominican, Cuba, Japan or Korea already love baseball. Do they really need a tournament like this to “expand” the game’s popularity?

What people have to remember is this is the first year of the tournament. There are a bunch of kinks that will need to be worked out, most importantly the timing of the event. While there is no perfect time to play these games there is definitely a better time than during spring training. So Selig should and will revisit the options of playing the game at a later date. The season could start a week earlier and end a week later. One idea is to play the WBC once every four years and stop the game for two weeks midseason, like the NHL does for the Winter Olympics. Midway through the year the players will be in shape and not as much concerned with injuries.

The players who aren't in the tournament can use the two-week break to recharge their batteries and again it would be only once every four years. It’s not as simple as that, of course, but it’s a much better idea than playing the tournament in the beginning or the end of a season when players are either just getting into shape or dead tired. The other kink to work out is convincing the players that the tournament is important and getting participation numbers up. The tournament cannot work without the support of the players and, as we can tell by this inaugural WBC, there are way too many players who don't view it as relevant.

So there is still plenty of work to be done. This is only year one. Baseball should commit to doing this again in four years and finding ways to make it better. Rome wasn't built in a day and neither will this Classic. Selig will have to go through the experience, learn from it and make the proper adjustments to make sure it goes smoother next time. It can work. It can be fun. It can be exciting. It's just not there yet.