While the rest of the MLB is playing out their preseason games, the World Baseball Classic is taking place in locations across the globe. I apologize, I know the photo above is actually of softball game, but I didn't feel like digging through all of my photos to find the one picture of a baseball game that I have.
The fact is, I watch a lot more softball these days than I do baseball. In fact, I watched a couple of games yesterday that my niece played in. In just a little over a week, @mrsbozz and I will be heading down to Ohio to watch my other niece play.
In between all the awesome action that has been happening on the college basketball front, I have found a bit of time as I was flipping through the channels to settle on the World Baseball Classic. There are some really great games being played. It's kind of like the olympics where it is interesting to see different players represent their respective countries.
I was watching a game the other day that was between Israel and Venezuela I think it was. Pretty interesting!
The last time the WBC was played was back in 2017 and the US team ended up being the champion. It consists of 20 teams total which is up from the 16 teams that participated in previous years.
While 16 of the teams were set at the start, four of them were determined by qualifiers back in 2022.
Believe it or not, we are already through most of the bracket and the championship game is taking place today down in Florida.
If you are a fan of the game, you probably won't be surprised to learn that the US teams is facing off against the Japanese team for the title.
Let's see how they got there.
Starting in the second round, Cuba beat Australia and USA beat Venezuela to advance. The US team was actually the runner up from pool C, so it hasn't been an easy road for them to get here.
In the semifinal the US beat Cuba to advance to the finals.
On the other side of the bracket, Mexico beat Puerto Rico and Japan beat Italy to advance to the semifinals. From there you already know that Japan beat Italy to advance to the finals.
From what I saw of the games, they were pretty fun to watch. I have seen some random criticism of the WBC, but as far as I am concerned, it is a pretty fun event. It's basically like the all-star game, but each country gets their own representation. I'd actually be cool if this ended up being an annual thing.
With no college basketball on the schedule until Thursday this week, there is a good chance I might tune in to watch the championship game tonight at 7 PM EST.
Not surprising that both Japan and the US have been putting up a lot of runs during this event. I see the US beat Cuba 14 to 2 over the weekend to advance into the finals.
Have you watched any of the WBC? What do you think? Are you going to tune in for the game tonight?
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I've only watched the highlights but there have been some great moments for sure. I'll likely watch the final as well. USA shouldn't sit back and just assume they got this one in the bag... Japan is good.
Japan has been good for quite some time now. I remember the movie Mr. Baseball with Tom Selleck. That was a classic!