WBC Review

Your Uncle Buck knows that the WBC is over, but he has been on the shelf since going on a St. Patrick's Day bender Friday to Monday so he had to say a little something about the way this thing played out...

UB was not shocked to see team USA fall in the 2nd round, but losses to Mexico and Korea were disappointing. The US players, scoring only 8 runs in 3 2nd round games, looked like players coming off their winter break. The pitching was also weak, despite two strong outings by Roger Clemens, and the quickly thrown together Dream Team never gelled. When it came right down to it this was an exhibition for the US, and a World Series for the rest of the teams. More disappointing was the teams that the US didn't play. They didn't play Puerto Rico, Cuba and the Dominican Republic. Would the team have played harder if they had matched up against those teams?

Although the US team may have many All Stars and potential Hall of Famers, this was not the best team the country could have put together. UB is not saying the US team didn't care (some like Chipper Jones acted like this was bigger than anything in MLB), but the whole of MLB and American fans didn't. American fans think of this country as the #1 World leader (which it is), therefore, the best baseball is here in MLB. The fans are used to cheering for players from other countries on their hometown teams, and many like UB found it hard to pull for Double Play-Rod in a US jersey. In Japan, which has it's own baseball league and has always been a pride filled nation, fans and the players were overjoyed to get a chance to show their skills against the country that invented Baseball. For UB it appeared to be a case of David vs. Goliath, with Goliath sending his step brother Frank in to play in the WBC. And maybe that is a good thing for the future of the WBC. International fans were going wild during their games, even if SportsCenter wasn't showing US game highlights until the B or C block...

The future of the game may just lie in the palms of the international players. So how will that grow in the next 3 years, before the next WBC that will be played in Japan?

Speaking of Japan, UB was happy to see them win the tournament after the way the American umps screwed them in the 4-3 loss to USA.

As for the runners up, Cuba, thank goodness they lost. Having to deal with follow up stories about Fidel Castro partying over conquering the American sport would have sucked...Instead UB prefers to watch this video of Fidel falling on his face...

"Oh golly, I'm hot today..."