World Baseball Classic is underway

The US squad got its first win yesterday in its first game of the WBC, defeating Mexico 2-0 behind solo home runs by Derrick Bell and Chipper Jones. The US team is part of a round robin that includes Mexico, Canada and South Africa.

Your Uncle Buck has received several emails about the WBC, wondering what UB thought of the whole thing. Well to be honest, UB wasn't sure what to make of all of this until he tuned into the WBC yesterday. Here are a few observations UB made while watching Dominican Republic vs Venezuela Venezuela and USA vs Mexico:

- Watching the Dominican Republic-Venezuela game, UB was impressed to see the crazy crowds, and how much it appeared to mean to the players, but to hear Harold Reynolds say that David Ortiz's solo home in the 2nd may be the biggest of his career is just foolish.

- UB understands that most of these players are still in a spring training mode, but the amount of substitutions in yesterday's US-Mexico game just boggled the mind. How can MLB except the fans to care about the WBC when the US team and manager don't. Example: In the 6th inning of a 1 run game Double Play-Rod was removed after a single for a pinch-runner. What idiot takes out the reigning MLB MVP in the 6th inning of a 1 run game?

- 7 pitchers were used by the US in yesterday's game. 7. Have you ever seen 7 pitchers used in a 2-0 shut out? Not even the All-Star game can claim to have had that many hurlers in a shutout, and on top of that it was 1-0 until the bottom of the 7th. In the 11-5 Dominican win over Venezuela the two teams used 10 pitchers combined.

- Red Sox Pitcher Mike Timlin was the winning pitcher in the 1st ever US WBC game.

- Sox slugger Big Papi Ortiz crushed 2 home runs, scored 3 runs and had 3 RBI. One of the home runs came against fellow lefty Johan Santana.

- The US team plays Canada today at 4 pm on ESPN, then takes on South Africa Friday with Roger Clemens taking the mound...