The biggest comparison I can make is with the Football World Cup (that's real football folks, not the US one!) Even though in recent years, the salaries have rocketed, club football seems to have become more important, and tournaments like the Champion's League have flourished, it is still regarded as the pinnacle of a football player's career to represent his country in the World Cup, in fact, there will always be players who despite having had a great club career, will always rue the fact that they never got to play in a world cup (I'm thinking Ryan Giggs for example)
Therefore, I have to admit that given the talent NOT competing in the WBC, it doesn't really fill me with too much optimism for the future of the event. As Richard said, this is the inaugural event ... what an honour to be involved with it and represent your country. For the WBC to succeed, it need to capture the imagination of the public (and a global public at that) and the only way to do that is to have all the major talent involved. It needs to be seen as THE major baseball tournament, not just a rehab recovery tournament (Bonds?) or a long spring training work out for bit-part players. Hopefully MLB will learn from this first one, and will try it again, but I just don't know whether this will ever succeed if the players don't take the right attitude towards it - after all, if Ronaldhino and Rooney don't turn up in Germany because they don't want to risk their club careers, it will kinda taint the football World Cup, yeah?
My other concern is that even with the correct player attitude, maybe a whole month added onto a season for the WBC is a bit much, especially if you are a player on a team expected to make it into the post season ... maybe MLB could look at slightly shortening the season slightly during a WBC year, although I'm not sure how easy that would be!
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