What in the name of Sir Allan H. Selig is going on here

I saw on ESPNEWS at dinner tonight that Ollie Perez blames the WBC for his woes this spring. Where do I begin?

You're a professional. You know what it takes to get you into shape for the season (yes, the season. the 6 months in the year that you get PAID to play baseball). you should know what to expect in the WBC (look at the schedule, and know you are NOT the only pitcher on the team).

it appears that Olliver Perez is not as smart as some other pitchers who CHOSE not to participate in the WBC.

I'll let the other bloggers take it from there.

quick update

I haven't blogged in a couple of weeks. I've been very busy with work this month. A few items of note.

• The skyline from the top of the old Shea right field scoreboard lives on - it will be atop a concession stand at the new ballpark, in centerfield I believe. Seven Train to Shea has a photo and a story about my new favorite concession stand (and thanks to loge13.com for pointing the way). There's also a bit on it from Mets Guy In Michigan.


• metsgrrl.com also has a photo of the skyline's new home in a very long, detailed post about our new baseball stadium, with lots of photos. The Mets have been taking ticket holders on tours, so there are a lot of reviews coming out now.


• From what I gathered at the end of Sunday's game, Friday night's Spring Training telecast will have Keith and Ron without adult supervision (no Gary, no Kevin in the booth). That should be very interesting. It's too bad I will be at the game and cannot actually listen to them. Thank goodness for the mlb.tv package so I can get the archived broadcast when I get back to the hotel. If anyone has paid more attention than I to the broadcasts this spring and knows what's up with Friday's game, please share.


• Team U.S.A. lost in the Semifinals in the WBC. And Joe Morgan made some execellent points on the ESPN broadcasts Saturday and Sunday night that I wish I had a transcript of. Seriously. They were talking about reasons why the tournament is played in the wrong time of year and I think also a bit on why Team U.S.A. couldn't advance further. I could write more on that, but not now, and very quickly, the whole thing will be out of our minds for another couple years.

Maybe I'll have time to write a good post about being at the "Santana Game" with the GaryKeithandRon group at Shea before I leave for Florida on Thursday. And maybe I won't.

I'll try to post photos and my thoughts of the whole Mets team in real time when I see them in Port St. Lucie in person Friday and Saturday, and whatever part of the team I see in Ft. Lauderdale on Sunday.

World Baseball Classic redeux

I should mention after my post last night on what I think of the WBC that I did attend 2 games in 2006 when they played the first round at the Disney Wide World of Sports complex in Florida (Grapefruit League home to the Atlanta Braves).

Australia (who's uniforms looked a lot like the Oakland Athletics) vs. Italy (who's uniforms and caps looked a lot like the LA Dodgers) - where I saw a lot of Italians attend the game to root for Italy. Piazza was still playing at that point. Not much of a game.

Australia vs. Venezuela - that was something. It was a blowout in favor of Venezuela, and watching their fans really get into the action was probably what the tournament is all about.

New poll question - do you like the WBC, in its current form, taking away from Spring Training, with Spring Training taking away from the WBC?

World Baseball Classic

Lots of blogers and analysts have made remarks about the WBC, so I'll throw in my 2 cents.

I like it...in a vaccuum. I've always liked seeing professional players compete for their countries in a tournament that will have a team you may want to root for, and lots of games involving other teams that are well worth watching.

Among others, Hockey does this every once in a while, going back to the days of the Soviet Red Army team against Canada's NHLers in the Canada Cup, and now with the Olympics and World Cup of Hockey. A well diversified league in terms of countries represented should show off their assets in a true international competition.

Basketball has their World Championships and Olympics, Soccer has its World Cup, and even Tennis has the Davis Cup tournament where players represent their countries in a team setting.

Baseball is doing this too. And well they should. There is a lot of great talent that comes from many different places. The Olympics just don't satisfy the taste for the great competition, mainly because the top level pros (at least from MLB) don't compete. Baseball will sit out of the next Olympic Games (2012 in London). Enter the World Baseball Classic.


As an interesting side note, this year, each of the 8 WBC teams training in Florida (sharing a complex with a Grapefruit League team for a couple days) is playing 3 exhibition games against MLB teams (each MLB team playing at least 1 such game). 24 such games over today, tomorrow, and the next day. If I had gone to Florida for this week, this would have been an interesting side trip to try to get around to see different matchups over the 3 days. The Cactus League is hosting 4 teams with similar scheduling now, and the 2 winners from the Japan bracket later in the month.

Today had Derek Jeter playing against the New York Yankees, Toronto hosting Canada, and later is Albert Pujols sitting while his teams - the Cardinals and Dominican Republic - face off (he decided that he couldn't be on either side for the game).

But it's just not done right. This is the height of competition, and it's being held at a point in time when players are just getting warmed up. The hitters are just getting their eye, and the pitchers, despite their head-start on training camp, are barely at the 3 inning point in a game.

It also takes away from Spring Training. Teams, especially after tweaks, trades, signings and/or new managers picked up during the off season, are trying to find their fit while players are leaving for as much as 3 weeks. If you're like me, who visits Spring Training every March to see the players and get autographs, this takes away from the fan experience. Who am I seeing on the Mets? Not the biggest stars.

Another reason why the WBC is bad in its place (and may never have a real place outside the vaccuum) - there have been a number of players who pulled out of the WBC, for various reasons, in favor of being with their pro team. Most of those reasons have to do with insurance the pro teams have on their biggest named players, or the player just isn't quite ready to be playing at that level.

I love the irony in that - the WBC is a hole in the integrity of Spring Training and what it's about, and Spring Training is a hole in the integrity of the WBC and what it's about.

So when can you have oen of these tournaments? In real life. I don't mean the answer to be in a video game.

• We see what happens when it's played during Spring Training


• Play it during the season - are you kidding? Do you stop the season for a month (then cut out about 28 games for each team, cut paychecks, etc.)? Do you play that part of the season with, dare I say it, replacement players? I don't think so!


• What about playing it after the World Series? Interesting. There have been some MLB All-Star team tours of Japan taking place in November. But to pull together a World Competition may be tough because a lot of players have some sort of surgery or prescribed rest after the season. There's always the risk of injury to pitchers.


• How about finishing up in late February, where the players of the final 2 teams come a few days late to their pro clubs but are already in shape? Ya, maybe, but you don't have players, or especially pitchers, in regular season form, so it will look a lot like the joke that goes on during Spring Training.


• Do we try to go some time in December or January, in the middle of the off season? I could make points that are a mix of the arguments against the November and February ideas. But I won't repeat myself.

The only good time to have the WBC is during the next work stoppage, whenever that happens to be.

Share your thoughts.

Spring Training and the WBC

Steve Popper at The Record in northern NJ just posted the Mets players that will be leaving the club to participate in the WBC during this Spring Training.

Maybe it's better that I won't be able to go this year.

Na, I'd still rather be in Florida this March.

Update - metsblog.com also lists the players. I link to metsblog.com, and metsblog.com links to me.