Atlanta Braves Post Mortem on the WBC

Do the flaws outweigh the benefits?  That’s the big question as the 4th World Baseball Classic is now in the books.

Most teams, including the Atlanta Braves, can now resume breathing:  their players got through the past 2+ weeks of WBC game play without getting hurt.

Others, such as Kansas City, are still shaking their heads as their backup catcher took out their starting catcher in a home plate collision.  Salvador Perez was back in action yesterday, but for a while, it certainly looked back for the Royals.

But what are the takeaways of this tourney?  You may have your own thoughts – please let us know below – but there’s more than a few things I want to get off my chest.

The Good Parts

There are indeed several:

• Bringing the sport to the world.  Baseball still needs more of a global presence to get it played universally, and this is now one of the key events to help make that happen.
• The competition.  It’s getting better.  Who would have guessed that Israel would get out of the first round?  Especially as they were playing 1/3rd of the way around the globe?  Also, we’ve now had 3 different winners among the 4 events.
• Quick turn-around on replay reviews.  Sure, one game was being played at a time, but for cryin’ out loud, why can’t all reviews be that quick?
• The character.  I’m still not entirely sure what Ian Kinsler was really trying to say the other day when one of his cleats was unfortunately caught in his mouth.  What he could have said was something more like this:

I love that fact that the Japanese had their own brass band in the stands playing virtually non-stop.  I love that the Latin Players celebrate virtually everything about the game on the field… and their fans with them.  I love that the Puerto Ricans started a blond craze on their entire island.

These are all things that are different from the American style of play.  It’s not a matter of better or worse.  It’s simply different.  It exudes character.  And yes – each team should exhibit traits of their own character on the field – and that even goes for the normally stoic Americans.

Heck – you could tell with a casual glance the differences of these teams.  Maybe of younger clubs would make base-running errors… errors of commission because they were trying to make something happen.  Many of the Latin teams were doing the same.

The Japanese seems to be the most disciplined of all, and the Americans seemed to go through the tournament with the idea that they could flip the switch any time necessary… and that ended up working for them.

But with all of this, we got to see it all… though at times, that meant getting up at dawn or staying up past midnight.

But that starts getting toward the things I didn’t like about the WBC…