World Baseball 'Classic' = Glorified Spring Training?

I know this has been talked about endlessly of late (and lets face it, there hasn’t been much else baseball-wise to talk about), but I appear to be the only person that’s not interested in this event, and get the feeling that it’s going to fall well short of all the media hype surrounding it. The timing of the classic falls somewhere between the start of spring training and the regular season, so by the time the classic comes about most players will be already in the swing of things and preparing themselves both mentally and physically for the long and demanding season ahead, the last thing they want to do is get injured just before the season starts, let alone get injured playing in an event that’s taking place merely for the media hype and for the men in suits to line their back-pockets with big chunks of coin.

The actual games in the classic for me are going to have a major spring training feel to them, taking place mainly for the fans to get together and see all the superstars on the same field, not about who wins and loses, but about the public having a good time. Any players who get injured whilst playing in this competition are gonna be trouble with the employers who pay their salaries, and if any player gets a serious injury it’s inevitable that the employers will be seeking the compensation and it could cause big rifts between employer and employee.

For any kind of world championship to be seriously successful and long-lasting the sport has to have a world-wide following, baseball doesn’t yet have that and I would say that outside of the USA, and Japan, its merely a minority sport, of which most of the public aren’t even aware of.

All this devalues the whole competition, the media and fans are expecting a closely fought, competitive competition that could be around for years to come. Me, personally, am expecting just another set of training games that are of little or no interest to me. Baseball just isn’t a big enough sport world-wide for this kind of event to take off just yet, if they want to promote the game world-wide, they should take more regular season games out of North America, and more than just a 2-3 game series once a season.

Raising public awareness outside of North America will do more for baseball as a sport in the long-term.





Stuart Smith