The World Baseball Classic

Sixteen teams in four venues from March 3 to March 20. Call it the Baseball World Cup if you want. It should be lots of fun. With things now worked out with the U.S. State Department, Cuba will fill the last spot in the list of sixteen. This is a good thing because without Cuba, the whole thing would have been a sham.

Pool A (Japan) is Japan, Korea, Taipei & China
Pool B (Arizona) is The United States, Canada, Mexico & South Africa
Pool C (Puerto Rico) is Puerto Rico, Cuba, Panama & The Netherlands
Pool D (Florida) is The Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Australia & Italy

Round 1 will consist of round robin play in the four pools with each team playing a total of six games. The top two finishers in each pool will advance to a second round robin in two four team pools. The teams from pools A & B will play in Anaheim and the teams from pools C & D will play in Puerto Rico.

The two top finishers from Round 2 in each pool will advance to the single elimination semi-finals and finals in San Diego. That’s a little too bad. It would have been nice to have another round robin with the last four teams but I guess either time became a factor or they decided that an elimination format at the end would be more exciting.

All of the teams have major leaguers on them. For instance Mike Piazza will be playing for Italy. Plus we'll get to see pros from Japan, China, Korea and Mexico. This is going to be lots of good clean fun. The Major League season might almost be anti-climactic after this. LET’S PLAY BALL!