World Baseball Classic

So I'll admit I haven't seen much of the WBC just yet, but I plan on watching as it moves along. To this point, I've seen the last few innings of a couple of games that were airing over Mike & Mike on ESPN2 and both of those games were long-odds shutouts.

Here is a good impassioned article by Jayson Stark on ESPN about how this needs to mean more to USA players and fans alike.

The points I want to make as it gets started:
1) How do you name something a "classic"? Maybe I'm missing something, but there's no nostalgia involved here so it seems forced. Why not tournament or cup or trophy?

2) I can completely understand by US players are underwhelmed at the prospect of playing more games with and against many of the same people they already play against for an extra month.

3) If you're trying to get American viewers, how about not having the initial few games at ungodly early hours? Like I said earlier, I stumbled on a couple of games in the morning, but couldn't bring myself to wake up at 4:30am to catch the game.

4) Why not find a good way to show the games via the internet? I had mixed results watching NCAA men's basketball online last year, but the point is that it was available if I wanted it, even if I wanted to watch during work.

As I'm about to leave, I'll finish here. I hope to have more WBC content up tomorrow.