Well, wasn’t that just a BLAST! While instead of watching the USA get beaten like a drum by Japan last night in the World Baseball Classic Semi-Finals, I was busy enjoying another brilliant episode of Celebrity Apprentice (Brande Roderick can be my project manager anytime). Instead of sitting down in my palatial estate and watching some of America’s best baseball players of my generation battle it out for a chance to be the best in the world. I watched as Brian McKnight sang his way into the hearts of 450 ACN Video Phone employees to finally win a task for the Men’s team.
This is where the problem is for the World Baseball Classic. To have someone who loves sports so much as to write about it on a daily basis on a blog not watch the game and instead watch random celebrities try to not to be fired by “The Donald” is not good for baseball. Now, I’m using myself as an example, but the problem is like this throughout the entire country. Dodger Stadium last night was maybe at 75% capacity and of the 75%, most of them were cheering for the Japanese team. A team that had stars like, Derek Jeter, David Wright, Jimmy Rollins, Ryan Braun manning the lineup could not draw the type of hype that is needed in America to drum up support for something new.
The fact remains that this competition does not get ratings because people have too many questions about it going in and its being broadcast at the worst time when it comes to grabbing people’s attention. March is the month that gives sports fans a slap to the face after having to deal with the boredom that a non-Olympic February brings (Heck some people are bored even during the Olympic years). March is of course the home of the NCAA Tournament which has us cheering for 18-21 year old’s who get no money from this cash cow to hit a couple of Free Throws late to seal a one point first round office pool win. To have the World Baseball Classic try to steal viewers from the tourney is like taking Candy from Shaq, its just not going happen. The WBC is flawed, with pitch counts, players not joining and MLB teams too afraid that there players will be hurt, long periods before games are played and of course the ever stupid seeding game.
The World Baseball Classic has four years until it rears its ugly head in March 2013 to try to fix itself to reduce the questions asked and to deliver more answers. This is a tournament that can succeed, but it certainly is along way off from taking off it’s training wheels.
By the way, Claudia Jordan, the Deal or No Deal Model, was fired last night….does anybody remember the USA-Japan score from last night?
-The Falk
Smoking with Hank 