Currently Reading: Shadow Family by Miyuki Miyabe
Tonight (Monday) at 8 PM central ESPN is showing the final game in the first World Baseball Classic. If you haven't been following it, well it's a bit late now but you can still catch the last game. There's been quite a bit of drama and some really great baseball going on.
The first round was pretty tame as far as the games went but you had such an odd mix of teams. Who knew they were big on baseball in South Africa? Or that there'd be a Team Italy? When you think of baseball you tend to think of the US, Latin America, maybe Canada, and Japan.
More recently in the major leagues there has been a much larger influx of players from Asia though. Depending on which minor league team is in your area, you might have seen some good players from China or Taipei or Korea. That one still throws me. South Korea is a baseball powerhouse. I'm not kidding. In one semi-final game it came down to South Korea (unbeaten no less) vs Japan.
Anyway, over on the other side of the bracket, the big mystery was Cuba. Everyone knows Cuba is a big baseball country but since they're pretty much a closed country, no one really knew how their players measured up with the players from other countries. Turns out they've kept right up with everyone else because they're in the finals tonight.
Japan vs Cuba. Should be a great game. I'll be cheering on Japan of course. Even before the series started I've been a fan of the way they play ball. It's much more like the way we used to play here in the US. Check out this story from the MLB site and you'll see what I mean.
Tomorrow I'll get back to the usual blog entries. Tonight I'm watching baseball :-)
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