Bhahahahahahahaha

Ok now that that's out of my system, for the second time, the Dominican team (made up of all stars like Hanley Ramirez, Jose Reyes, David Ortiz, Pedro Martinez, Edison Volquez, Robinson Cano, Miguel Tejada etc.) lost to the team from the Netherlands (who's best players are Sidney Ponson and Rick VandenHurk, and all but three have no major league experience).

The good news of course, is that Jose Reyes and Fernando Tatis are now out of harms way and wont be over exerting himself for a pointless tournament.

The other upset is Team Italy defeating Team Canada.

I was actually kind of surprised to see the talent the Canadian team had assembled this year. Justin Morneau, Russel Martin, Jason Bay, Joey Votto, Matt Stairs, Corie Koskie, and Pete Orr are all Canadian? who knew?

But Team Canada lacked pitching talent, and lost to Italy's powerhouse of Nick Punto and Frank Catalanotto. Lets be real, the best player Italy has in that dugout is hitting coach Mike Piazza.

You know, as funny as it is to see these star studded teams lose to teams with just a few major leaguers, I think it highlights an important problem with the World Baseball Classic. The fact of the matter is, the teams with less major league players should win most of the time.

Seriously, to these single A, Japanese league and Latin league players the World baseball classic is like their World Series, it is their opportunity to show the world what they can do, and why a major league club should take a shot on them. So naturally these guys are preparing themselves from months in advance, they are giving 110% for every game. Of course they are going to beat these major leaguers who A) don't really care about the tournament, B) Use the tournament as warm up for the regular season, and C) Aren't playing 50% let alone 100%.

There's really nothing they can do to fix this problem, no major league player is ever going to put the WBC before the regular MLB season. And if they only used amateur players or minor leaguers, it wouldn't garner enough interest from the fans to even warrant having the tournament in the first place.

Of course, the Commissioner wont admit this publicly, but Major League Baseball secretly wants these teams from the Netherlands, Italy, China, Australia, Panama, and South Africa to upset the powerhouse teams. That helps to promote the sport world wide. If team USA, Japan or the Dominican won it every year, it doesn't do much to promote the sport to other countries in Europe, Africa, South America and Asia. Read More...

Sometimes baseball is a weird game. After dropping 7 of their previous 8, the Mets finally looked like a Major League Baseball team the last 3 games, taking the last 2 out of 3 from the Marlins, and winning tonight against the Dodgers.

I was fortunate enough to score last minute tickets to Tuesday's game, and decided to go in the hopes of trying to get this team's luck turned around. I have to say for the first time this season, the Mets and their fans actually looked like they were in the game.

Since the dog days of summer of last year when the Mets suddenly became a sub-par .500 team, the players have just been going through the motions, the fans have been quiet in their seats, and the excitement of 2006 seemed dead and buried. However we saw flashed of that excitement these last three days at Shea.

Could it be the resurgence of Jose Reyes has finally kicked in? Was Fernando Tatis really all this team has been missing? Can it be the bullpen which has been brilliant the last few days? Or is it the orange suit jacket being donned by Mets VP of Media Relations Jay Horowitz?

Whatever the reason, the excitement is back in Queens, the Mets just need to take that excitement and translate it into some wins so they can get back in this race for the NL East.
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