The warming weather, the budding flowers and the chirping birds can only mean one thing: its time for baseball. Every year, millions of fans across the country, myself included, look forward to this time as the point in the year when the ground thaws, the days grow longer and the crack of a wooden bat against cowhide ball fills the air.
This year, baseball fans got a special treat during the annual period of spring training in the form of the second edition of the World Baseball Classic. The tournament is a World Cup-style competition in which the best national teams around the world compete against teach other for the title of a true World Champion.
With players such as Dustin Pedroia, Derek Jeter and Curtis Granderson putting on the Red, White and Blue to take on Miguel Cabrera, David Ortiz and Ichiro Suzuki dressed in their respective national colors, it should have been one of the best moments in baseball history.
Yet, for the second straight time, the tournament failed to live up to its potential. Rather than being as closely followed as the FIFA World Cup, it fell to the same attention level as the women's NCAA tournament.
Why did this happen, you ask? Shouldn't baseball, which prides itself as being a U.S.-created international game, have more interest in its home country? Yes, it should have, if only if it could address some vital flaws.
First off, if there is to be a national team representing the United States, let it actually showcase the best players born in that country. Players should not be allowed to opt out of the tournament, either for injury or for the desire to get more experience in their respective spring training camps.
At the same time, teams should not have a say whether or not they want their players to appear for their country. Other sports, especially soccer, force clubs to give up their players for the national good. If baseball is to have a world-class competition, then it needs world-class athletes to show up for it.
Second, they have to fix the format with which the tournament is played. While MLB got rid of the horribly complicated tie-breaker format that plagued the inaugural 2006 edition, the double-elimination format of this year created a situation where the two finalists, Korea and Japan, ended up facing each other five times the entire tournament. Baseball should once again look to soccer to fix this problem. They can keep the initial group play to cut down the 16 teams down to eight, but then have a straight single elimination bracket in which one game separates moving on from going home. This will be more thrilling for fans and will get rid of teams playing each other over and over.
Finally, the timing of the event needs to be fixed. This is potentially the most challenging obstacle to overcome. Playing the tournament during spring training has proven to be the worst time, because not only are players still getting ready for the regular season but also fans' attention is already split amongst the NBA, NHL and start of the NCAA tournament.
Thus, I propose that the tournament be split up, with the group play taking place during the middle of spring training while the quarterfinals through finals being during a week at the All-Star break. This way, the initial games could be played when players are starting to warm up for the year while the true competition would be when players are all geared up and ready to play for a tournament title. There is never going to be a perfect time, but at least this is a start.
I truly think that the World Baseball Classic could some day be as big as the FIFA World Cup, even potentially bigger with the great number of baseball fans in the United States. It is a tournament that fans have dreamed of ever sense more and more players started coming from foreign countries during the end of the 20th Century. Yet, in its current format, it seems like just another exhibition, similar to the one that was recently removed from Olympics play. Major League Baseball is sitting on a gold mine, and in the light of the recent problems plaguing the sport, lets hope they don't misplay this perfect opportunity.
You can reach this columnist at jhall@theeagleonline.com.
