Team USA Eliminated from the World Baseball Classic

Team USA was eliminated from the World Baseball Classic last night after Team Japan blew the Americans away with hit after hit after hit.  Japan ended up winning the game 9-4. They will face Korea in what should be an intense matchup of two baseball-crazy countries who don’t particularly like one another.

But for fans of Team USA, the questioning will begin.  Why is it that we continue to lose these international competitions when it seems as though we should have the best players in the world on our team?  While baseball has increasingly become an international sport, with Asian and Latin American countries leading the surge of worldwide national teams, it’s the US that usually produces the biggest Major League Baseball stars. And it’s the MLB that’s truly the pinnacle of professional baseball, right? So why can’t we win one of these international tournaments?

Scott Miller tries to tackle this issue in his latest article. While most of the points he raises are the obvious ones, they really do need to be addressed. We don’t take the games as seriously as the other teams. They happen right in the middle of the warm-up period. The managers are sleep walking through it. Some of the best young players don’t want to show up for risk of injury… the list goes on.  Check out the article and think for yourself tonight about this perplexing issue.

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Permalink - Posted in General on March 23, 2009 - Post a comment