World Baseball Classic

Thanks to my brother for pointing out this article about the success the World Baseball Classic has had in selling tickets—Petco Park in San Diego (great picture in the article) has sold 85 percent of its seats. I’m looking forward to the games, and it’ll be nice to have some competitive baseball a month earlier than normal.

The rosters are a mixed bag. The notion that a player gets to choose his team seems weird, but I guess it increases general interest when Mike Piazza (born in PA) plays for Italy, as will some random guy named Kasey Olenberger, who hails not from Rome or Florence but from my wife’s hometown of Santa Rosa, California. My great-grandfather came from Denmark, and I’m thinking it’s a shame there is no Danish team, because no one there plays baseball so I think I could make the team.

Now, we know both Hugo Chávez and Fidel Castro want to win badly. Chávez has some MLB pitching help from Tony Armas, Freddy García, Johan Santana, and Carlos Zambrano; hitting he has Bobby Abreu, Miguel Cabrera, Richard Hidalgo, and Magglio Ordonez (if he’s healthy). Not too shabby.

We’ll have to see about Cuba (which only got to play after intense but absurd negotiations with the U.S. government), which routinely produces high quality players. The MLB site has no info at all about their players aside from their names (not even rank or serial number). State secrets, I suppose.