I searched and didn’t find a thread on this topic, which left me slightly surprised and disappointed. For many, many years I had been hoping for an international baseball competition, like the FIFA World Cup, or the Ice Hockey World Championships.
Now here it is, and while people around here are sure getting excited from what I can tell the interest isn’t nearly as high in America.
The nice thing about this, and the previous, tournament is that it shows that the playing field is a lot more level than many would have expected. Sure, the American team is pretty daunting, but other countries have very serious line-ups, and teams like Korea that don’t have any real big names have shown that they shouldn’t be dismissed lightly.
As a matter of fact, so far there have already been some serious surprises. China (where baseball is largely unknown) beats Taiwan (which has a fairly long baseball tradition). Japan crushes their arch-nemesis Korea 14-2. Just when you think their anemic offence has woken up, two days later they lose to Korea 1-0.
Australia’s batters also exploded against Mexico, in another upset: 17-7. However, Mexico then proceeded to kick Australia’s ass 16-1.
Italy, of all places, beat Canada. Venezuela (though a strong contender) managed to defeat the Americans.
The most surprising upset, however, has to be the Netherlands (!) beating the Dominican Republic not once but twice. The Dominicans are now eliminated, when on paper they should have been one the scariest teams.
At this point, I have no idea what’s going to happen in the remaining games, and that’s a good thing. Anyone has any thoughts/analysis/predictions?