If you have been following me for the past couple of weeks, you know that there has been a lot going on in the orbit of my sports world. Between the lead up to the NCAA basketball tournament, the Winter Olympics, my niece starting her freshman season of softball at university, and the World Baseball Classic, it has been crazy. Yesterday I shared my picks with you for the NCAA men's basketball tournament, but today is dedicated solely to baseball.
It's funny because as I said in the past, there are still Major League Baseball games happening right now as part of their Spring training regime. However, the real action has been taking place all over the world with the World Baseball Classic. It's kind of like the Olympics of baseball (though I think baseball is coming back to the Olympics). All these great players from US teams head back to their home countries and they represent as they try to win it all.
After a solid two weeks of pool play and then bracket play, we finally find ourselves at the championship game tonight. I likely won't be able to stay up to watch the whole thing but if this past weekend has proven anything, it should be a good one. If you are the sort of person who loves come back wins, I hope you were able to watch some of the WBC games over the past few days.
There was definitely no shortage of dramatic victories.
On Friday we had the Dominican Republic take on Korea with DOM winning 10 to 0 over Korea. Then the US and Canada went head to head in the quarterfinals with the US just edging out Canada 5 to 3. Which led to Saturday with the final two quarterfinal games being played Italy had a dramatic win over Puerto Rico 8 to 6 in a game that you should probably go back and watch if you didn't get the chance. Likewise, Venezuela had a stunning victory over Japan 8 to 5.
Japan is the reigning champion of the WBC and it looked like they were set to run the table in the tournament this year. It just goes to show you how big of a motivator determination can be. I'm not going to throw all the stats at you, but like I said before, if you didn't watch any other games in the World Baseball Classic, these last four games were the ones to watch. Those two on Saturday, and then the Sunday and Monday games that took place for the semifinals.
Sunday while everyone else was still working on their basketball brackets, the US had a tight game against the Dominican Republic to see who would make it to the championship game. The US came away with a 2 to 1 victory and punched their ticket for the chance to be the world champions.
Then, last night Venezuela rallied from behind to knock out what has become a fan favorite Italy team 4 to 2. This Italy team has been amazing to watch as they have blown away every expectation people had for them. Yes, they do have a lot of professional players on the team, but they still weren't expected to do this well.
As I said, tonight we have Venezuela vs the US for the whole shebang at 8 PM on your local FOX station. It should be one heck of a game and I'm actually kind of sad it is going to be over. Now we have to wait three more years for it to happen again...
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