I can't believe I have lived my entire life without realizing that this sort of event exists and it kind of makes me happy that there actually is a real "World Cup" because Americans are often, and rightfully so, criticized for having an event where a world champion is crowned in USA-centric sports when the rest of the wo`rld isn't even invited to play.
I won't watch every single one of these games because there are far too many of them but I am reminded about a comment I made on a post somewhere when someone had the gall to say "nobody other than Americans care about baseball" and while I already knew that is not true, I didn't realize exactly how widespread the interest actually is.
A lot of these teams do not surprise me. I was aware the Japan and Korea love the sport as does most of Central America. I was surprised to find out that Great Britain and Australia even have teams though. I suppose this would be like people being surprised that the USA has a cricket team.
It looks to me like it could be pretty exciting the same way that the football world cup is exciting for a lot of people and even though most of the games will be taking place in USA, as you would expect, it is pretty cool that they have some of the games in Japan as well to cater to that market as well. Obviously the finals will be in USA but it is pretty cool that they are at least trying to include the rest of the world as far as the time of day that the games will be on.
There was a rather tumultuous start to the tournament as there was no real global governing body like FIFA as far as baseball goes but they seem to have figured it out since 2006. Just like the football World Cup, it is held once every 4 years and while a lot of people would probably presume that the USA would just blow past everyone that is not the case at all. Only 3 teams have ever won this tournament and they were of course USA, but also Dominican Republic and Japan has won it twice.
I would imagine that these teams are this year's favorites as well but there is plenty of other talent in the mix as well. I think taht teams like Italy being in there are kind of like USA being in the Rugby World Cup. They are there because they are the "best" in a bad group and nobody really expects them to get very far. Fine by me!
Baseball is a tough game with a lot of strategy in it that I don't really fully understand but often, a team can advance when it could be considered really lucky. For example, in one of the years I read that Japan, who ended up winning the entire thing, lost 3 games on their way to the end and only advanced out of the group stages because other teams equally a poorly. Then I guess they figured out a winning strategy and went on to win the entire thing eliminating the USA in the process. That's baseball though folks and part of the reason why I don't want the absurdly long season in MLB. One week the top team in the league might just have a really bad day and lose to a really bad team by a dozen runs. It doesn't mean the team that won that game is better, but they were on that day and that is all that matters.
I won't say that I will be glued to the screen on this one but if you feel like checking the scores out I will be updating them here and well, so will a lot of other places on the internet. The tournament starts in three different cities on the 6-11th of March.