Chinese Taipei shut out top favorite Japan 9-0 in the Gold Medal Game at the inaugural 21U Baseball World Cup at Intercontinental Stadium in Taichung, Taiwan on Sunday. One day earlier Japan had won 6-2, but managed just four hits in the final. Korea finished in third place ahead of Nicaragua.
The Asian teams nearly completed a sweep of the Awards and All-Star selections. Only outfielder Arnol Rizo Blanco from Nicaragua cracked the list. Chun-Lin Kuo from Chinese Taipei was named Most Valuable Player.
The Czech Republic ended up with a historic fifth place as best European team in the tournament. Italy and the Netherlands came in at seventh respective ninth place. The next 21U Baseball World Cup will be held in 2016 in Sinaloa, Mexico.
Final Standings:
- Chinese Taipei
- Japan
- Korea
- Nicaragua
- Czech Republic
- Australia
- Italy
- Venezuela
- Netherlands
- New Zealand
- Mexico
For all stats and award selections please download the final report from the IBAF website.
So, the MIghty Dutch finished above New Zealand and Mexico. (No one knows what happened to the Mexicans — maybe something in the water.)
The Netherlands must be so proud. Gee, if Thailand and Israel and South Africa had been in the tournament, the Dutch might have been a first-division team! Loose Einhorn’s leadership and look what his replacement produces.
A tournament without teams from the U.S., Cuba, Puerto Rico or the Dominican Republic yields a champion of an imaginary “world”. But, in the real world, its no champion.
And the IBAF presumes to “rank” the world’s national teams based on pseudo competition like this.
So you call the Chinese Taipei as a FAKE champion? B.S. Stop paying a disrespect to all of those Taiwanese players, who did their best to earn the crown in this tournament.
This tournament may lacked some top notched countries from Americas for it’s competition. So what? Regardless of who you play against, you have to play hard or simply lose the game. That’s exactly what the Nicaraguans proved through this championship. They might have been seen as an underdog, but the result is totally different as you see above.
Lacking US, Cuba, Puerto Rico, DR doesn’t mean you can play ball with cutting corners. All the players could do was playing hard to earn the win; that effort is always required when you’re standing on the diamond, and finally the CT could get to the top. So why do you defame themselves from the outfield breachers? How come you even can’t pay the least respect for their efforts? If not, then that’s absolutely not a favourable attitude for a baseball coach at all.
I must tell you the fact that the vision “the inaugural 21U World Cup with America’s top countries” has turned into the “imaginary” since the games are already over. So what we should think about is how we should make the 2nd edition the better one. If you’re still only to bitch and moan against those pasts, then I’ll give you this following message;
SHUT YOUR MOUTH UP, GET OFF THE TRAIN AND STICK TO YOUR OWN BUSINESS.
I don’t believe my post used the word, “fake”. But, since you did, it certainly fits.
Any tournament, which leaves off 4 of the top 5 baseball nations on earth, lies when it calls its winner a “world champion”. Maybe you should call it the “Pretend World Championship” or “Wannabe World Championship” or “Kinda Sorta Woulda Coulda World Championship”.
I personally know the team designated by USA Baseball was ignored by the Taiwan organizer. The team was offered a spot in your tournament through USA Baseball, then the Taiwan guy would not return their calls or answer their emails. (I clearly laid out the facts in my second comment on the November 21 Mr. Baseball post about the U-21 tournament.) One can only imagine that he did the same with Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic. And then, what do you know, his team is crowned “world champions”. Imagine that.
Only of your imaginary little world where the also-rans win because the true competitors are kept out of the competition.
It is sad to see you hide behind the players to justify your tournament managers’ shoddy behavior. I’m sure the players gave their best. It is the organizers who wrongly shamed those players by claiming for the tournament a title which it did not deserve.
Your English is not very good, so I could not understand your poor sentence construction through most of your comment. But I think you were trying to play the FIFA approach: “We got away with it, so don’t talk about it any more. We’ll just talk about doing it right next time”
No.
If your group wants to be respectable, it must answer why it did not include the best baseball countries in its “world” championship. It owes baseball an explanation. Otherwise, the “championship” continues to be recognized as a fraud.
As to sticking to my “own business”, baseball has been my business for some decades. Like most American (or Cuban or Dominican or ‘Rican) coaches, I’ve forgotten more about the game than you will ever know. Tell us, what do you have to do with baseball, and in what country? Are you a European coach or a fan — or a federation/IBAF executive (which is usually an ignorant fan with a title)?
In the final analysis, you IBAF people have made fools of yourselves again. None of the legitimate baseball countries (USA, Japan, Korea, any of the Caribbean countries, and possibly Canada) pays attention to your comical posturing, anyway. We’re too busy playing the game at a competitive level — which means among ourselves.
And then, making itself look even more foolish than in the past, the IBAF uses non-participation in tournaments to which they weren’t invited as reasons to downgrade the top countries in its “world ranking”. The idea that Holland is the #5 baseball program on earth is simply laughable. Better than the Dominican and Peurto Roco and Korea?? HA ha ha ha ha ha.
First of all, I have to state one thing; I have absolutely NOTHING to do with neither IBAF nor WBSC right now personally. I am the outsider of those feds, and even NOT from any European country. Don’t simply believe “everyone who doesn’t support my idea are from the Fed.”
Now don’t miss this point; I’m a Japanese who grew up in Croydon UK, a fanatic fan of baseball, and now a president of Japanese NPO to help baseball become one of the grobal competitive sport. So I am also from one of the legitimate countries you’ve listed in your comment, and still pointing out YOU ARE WRONG.
Okay, I understood your story about the USA Baseball. But what about those Carribean countries? I’ll tell you one story. Now the Central American and Carribean games are held in Veracruz, Mexico from 15th to 21st. And Cuba, DR and PR are all participating in this tournament. So we can say they wanted to focus on this “Carribean Olympic games” for both financial and competitive reasons.
Yes, we can also see the names of Mexico and Venezuela at the Carribean games, who also participated to the 21U too. But not all countries have an ability to play two competitive games at the same time. Even my country don’t. While earning the silver in Taiwan, our senior NT played against the MLB allstars, but that was just a kind of friendly matches.
Well, I respect all of those Carribean ball players and not against them at all. But still then your statement “top countries” is questionable. Of course, Americas nations has developed many legendary players, but their stories are all written inside MLB. Then we look back at the past international championships. Did they always send their best players? Apart from Cuba, the answer is no. When you look outside the world of MLB or WBC, they are not always a best competitor. That’s just why DR is listed below some European countries and I don’t personally estimate them as a team favourable at the World Cup.
Oh, and I must point out another stuff about the word “legitimate.” If you want to classify your country the best, then why doesn’t US still haven’t claimed the title at their own WBC? At least we have reached the final 4 all 3 times and got to the top twice; and the Dutchmen blew out the Koreans at the newest edition in face-to-face. But you have earned nothing at the world’s biggest championship EVEN WITH YOUR OWN TOP PLAYERS. I don’t think it a polite way to call yourself a top tier by looking at those facts. And the very last thing to show you “the top tier” at the world stage, the IBAF ranking is what you laughed at. Ignorant.
So you’re a Japanese who grew up in London. I guess that gave you an understanding of baseball a lot like the understanding of democracy by an American who grew up in Russia. All your knowledge is from reading about it — certainly not from clawing your way to Koshien Stadium as most Japanese high school boys did. By your own admission, you are a fan. Not a participant; a fan. Now, you have a little non-prfit which you dedicate to making baseball a truly international sport. Good luck with that. The IOC is right; all your posturing won’t change that.
Look, the whole myth of the IBAF is your myth: that also-ran national teams can compete with the top countries. It is pure self delusion.
You do not contest that Taiwan kept an American entry out of your <21 "world" championship. Why would they do that? The obvious answer is that they could not stand the competition.
Consider Team USA, which Baseball USA sends out to represent our country every summer. It consists of our second-line college freshmen and sophomores (18 to 20 year-olds). I say second line because the best freshmen, sophomores and juniors play in the Cape Cod League — an experience which major leaguers recall with great pleasure.
Those young college players wipe up almost all other countries' "pro" teams and national teams of 25 and 30 year-olds. A team of California junior college stars would have done the same to Taipei. Apparantly, they knew it.
You also recognize the point that the superior programs often do not send their best teams to your little "world" championships. If you are correct, Cuba and the Dominican and P.R. preferred to play in a Caribbean tournament than your Taiwan event. Why? Most likely they felt the nearby competition was better.
So, when your Taiwan tournament intentionally denies the American team competition, and schedules at the same time of a well-established Caribbean tournament, it's claim to crown a "world" champion is not just suspect. It is fraudulent.
When the IBAF consequently ranks national programs, primarily based on their participation in IBAF tournaments, that ranking is also bogus.
To rank The Netherlands above the Caribbean teams is a prime example. You claim the "Dutchmen" blew up Korea. But they weren't Dutchmen. There might be one Dutch player on the field at a time for the Netherlands. All the others are from Curacao and Aruba — from the Caribbean. Those players are about as "Dutch" as you and I. Though part of the Netherlands Commonwealth, only about 8% of them primarily speak Dutch. Even when the Dutch speak of "The Netherlands", they mean Holland — not the Caribbean islands. It would make as much sense for the USA to claim Puerto Ricans for our national teams, or for Great Britain to claim players from Canada or Australia.
My point is that most "national" teams (Dutch, Spanish, Italian, British, Israeli, etc. etc.) are propped up by players from the USA and the Caribbean. To claim a "national" status for these teams, which could not compete if they relied only on their countrymen as the US, Canada, Japan, Korea, and the Caribbeans do, is disingenuous. This is why the International Olympic Committee does not recognize baseball as a truly international sport.
To "rank" these teams — whose survival in international competition depends on foreign players — as somehow equal to the truly competitive countries is ludicrous. It's a bad joke. The rainment of The King Who Had No Clothes.
To claim the Caribbean countries are only superior if one considers their play in MLB, is simply stupid. One might as well say the German and Brazilian soccer programs are only great if you cosider their FIFA or World Cup participation. Are you really that dense? You actually can't understand that those who participate in the world's premier competition (MLB) have the right to say they're among the world's best? The fact that the Dominicans and Puerto Ricans compete in MLB in numbers far above America's and everyone else's numbers per 100,000 population gives them every right to be recognized as among the best on earth.
And participation in some silly IBAF tournament be damned. Nobody cares. Nobody in truly competitive baseball should.
Twenty-five years ago, Canadian baseball wasn't much better than Europe's. The Canadians rolled up their sleeves and developed their young players' skills. Unlike the Europeans and Africans and Thai and Israelis, etc. etc. — who dabble in player development, but focus their greatest energies on stacking tournaments and posturing and creating bogus rankings to make themselves feel better — the Canadians put all their effort into getting better. Now, most quality U.S. college teams have a Canadian or two. And there are several in the Major Leagues, who have actually played full time for over a year. In 100 years, no European player has done that.
If you want all these piddling baseball federations to qualify for a truly international level of play, let them put aside their posturing and emulate the Canadians.
Those at the top would welcome their effort. And, finally, they'd earn some respect.
I’m just like an American who learnt democracy in Russia? You can say like that just becuase you know nothing about me in person.
I met the sport after getting back to Japan; that was 16 years ago, and knew nothing about European baseball until 2009 WBC, just as those ordinary baseball animals here. Didn’t played at Koshien but I played the sport by myself too, so I was also a participant too. And all participant should be basically also a fan of the sport, aren’t they?
Well, I’ll move on to the responce. I have already told you on the former article that this is a World Cup and only the participation of sanctioned national team is required. Then look at your Californian Junior Colledge Allstars; it isn’t a “national” team at all. It’s just a regional allstars. Where did the other 49 states go? On the other hand all the participated teams recluited players from all over their Nations. Talking about my country, we even sent pros playing in the Japanese top league too.
CJCA might have been a good team, but it doesn’t represent the whole USA. They’re no more than a representative of Californian state. Sending CJCA to the 21U World Cup is just like the Germans sending Bavarian Allstars instead of their NT to FIFA World Cup, just because they believe Bavaria has the mighty Bayern Munchen and the BA can blow out other countries by their own. While other 31 countries are sending their official NTs to the tournament. How ridiculous it is!!
If the organisers in Taiwan hear such responce, then it’s natural for them to think “Sending a team to World Cup from just a single state? Oh well. They aren’t giving any respect to this tournament at all.” Who would like to add someone to the tournament who doesn’t show the least respect by their behaviour? I would say “sending CJCA to the tournament” wasn’t the answer which organisers required to USA baseball.
Talking about the schedules, I think they had to settle it at the same time, considering mostly the weather in Asia. Now it has been the latter half of November, and even though Taiwan has warmer climate in East Asia, it’s not a good condition to play good baseball. So they seems not being able to move the schedule. On the other half, Carribean games are not only for baseball; it’s a joint complex tournament with other sports, so they also couldn’t move the schedule too.
About the national teams. First of all I must say not all European countries still likes to rely on “foreign players.” UK has already started a team called GB Lions years ago, which consists of only their “native” youngsters. You can see some article here. Czech and Italy played the 21U with their own countrymen; only Italy’s Yomel Rivera was born in DR but he’s already naturalized. If you take a look at their rosters on IBAF website, you won’t see any American first name there. And the Czech got the 5th place beating Australia, so your statement “European countries can’t compete without the help of Americas” is wrong.
Well, of course I know that DR and PR has so many Big leaguers per population in this game. So what? How does it affect the rankings? Even though we admit MLB as the premier competion, it’s basically just a domestic league held in USA and Canada. Even if you have great numbers of top players, it affects NOTHING to the int’l rankings at all. All you have to do to be No.1 of the rank is to participate the official int’l tournament and winning it. That’s the grobal standard for any kind of sports which exists on this globe.
Netherlands are ranked 5th just because they had won many tournaments in the past, including the 2011 World Cup; you might say most of their players aren’t Dutch, but actually they ARE, at least by their national law. And the right to join NT’s are always ruled based on the law too. If you say “Curacoans and Albans shouldn’t join the Dutch NT’s because they are all colonized people and basically not Dutch,” then you shouldn’t put any players who were born in Hawaii on the US NT with same reason, eh?
And DR proved the fact “if you want to move on higher place, you have to win the tournament” by themselves, when they won the 3rd WBC and then ranked among the top 10. That’s because WBC was also sanctioned by IBAF from then. If you say IBAF tournaments are silly so you never pay respect, that’s okay. But then you’ll lose the chance to be ranked at the top tier of the world rankings. I’ll repeat; this is the grobal standard.
Many developing countries are now making their effort to play competitive, so tell me about it. And helping out their effort is what my crew is gonna do, so I recommend you to welcome it rather than making fun.
Thank you for displaying your ignorance: MLB is “basically just a domestic league held in USA and Canada”. One must be a baseball illiterate to utter such a stupid claim. Let alone, actually believe it!?!
Let me help you understand reality: MLB is THE world standard of baseball. They don’t need your IBAF or any other group of baseball pretenders for legitimacy. They are the pinnacle because they are. The IBAF, on the other hand, does need MLB to exist. If MLB were to disassociate with it tomorrow, IBAF would implode within 18 months.
The World Series is called that because THE BEST TEAMS IN THE WORLD compete to win it. Therefore, the best teams on earth are, in order, the San Francisco Giants, the Kansas City Royals, Cardinals, Angels, Dodgers, Pirates and on down the list of MLB teams. MAYBE the Cuban national champs would crack the bottom of that list. MAYBE the NPL champion would be 30th. Once you’ve gone through the Cuban, Japanese and Korean professional leagues, and the better USA minor leagues and top college teams, the champions of your little IBAF tournaments MIGHT be considered the 150th or 200th best teams in the world.
But true “world” champions? A total joke.
Your rankings are absurd because the idea that a team, which wins a tournament (including the WBC) most of the top 1,000 players at that level don’t bother to participate in, is “world champion” is a prima facie fraud. Nobody in America cares whether we are ranked 1st or 10th by IBAF. Less than 1% of American baseball participants even know what an IBAF is. You’re irrelevant.
If you want to know the world standard of excellence, just ask the top 25 NPL players what league they’d die to play in.
The same is true at the youngest age. The Little League World Series is the world standard at that age group. Now, the IBAF also has a 12 & under tournament. It’s a gathering of also-rans.
By the way, your standards of what is and isn’t legal change according to what you want at a given time. First, you say players from Aruba and Curacao are part of the Netherlands (even though they’re aren’t Dutch) because Dutch rules say they are. That’s legitimate in your mind. Then, you say the California Community College team — which the USA federation chose as its representative to the age-21 tournament — is not legitimate because you don’t accept USA Baseball’s standard. Rather hypocritical.
The real reason the IBAF didn’t want the California CC team in your age-21 tournament is that those Americans would have wiped up the field (with the exception of Japan, whose baseball we greatly respect). Taiwan would never have made it to the championship game. The IBAF chickened out of inviting the Americans using the excuse that our team was not “representative”. Utterly cowardly prevarication.
And that is the core of the IBAF approach. You put your energy into stacking tournaments making up titles and sending out news releases, rather than ACTUALLY becoming world competitive. Your highest priority is posturing.
This is why the International Olympic Committee will not allow baseball. They have rightly concluded that it is not a world sport: after US/Canada, the Caribbean, Japan and Korea, no one else is competitive. It’s a regional sport. Secondly, the best players (MLB) are never available for olympic play because they’re in the middle of the MLB season. Again, the IOC doesn’t want baseball because it is a regional sport and its best athletes won’t be there.
If the IBAF had made serious commitments to becoming competitive (i.e. doubling the games in a season; hiring experienced US, Japanese, etc. coaches; competing for positions on US & Japanese college teams where the game is best taught — at least here — and then taking that experience home to strengthen their federations), then the game might be more international.
Instead, they are amateurs who focus on posturing. For instance, the Taiwan tournament manager refusing to even communicate with USA Baseball when it offered a team for the age-21 tournament. Professionals — quality leaders — conduct themselves as professionals. Even if he did not want the USA team, integrity required him to present a civil response. Instead, he pouted like a teenager. Amateurish.
The bottom line is this: Those who play this game well barely know you also-rans exist. Our baseball people could not care less about your “world” rankings. We don’t need you. If you can’t summon up the character to realize your place and do the very hard work to EARN legitimacy, then don’t bother us. Go away and play with yourselves.
And your “crew is gonna” change that? The world is full of pretenders whose only legitimacy is what they claim they will do. Someday. Maybe. If only. Build a record of ACTUAL success; then come back and talk to us.
Come on man, you can’t spell NPB correctly!? I laughed my ass off when I saw you saying the word “NPL” instead. Well, maybe I should kindly forgive it because you can’t even spell Puerto Rico correctly as well, while you’re using it against me as your offensive weapon.
MLB is the baseball’s standard? They are pinnacle because they are? That’s nothing but the America’s arrogance. I’ll give you a famous Japanese proverb; The flog in the well knows nothing about the ocean. Apart from the rookie leagues in DR or Venezuela, all MLB games are usually held only in Northern America and that’s it. That’s the reason I described MLB as the domestic league of US and Canada. And what’s silly is that they call their best team “WORLD champion” even though they ONLY play against same American and Canadian teams.
I don’t refuse to admit MLB as the premier competition, but calling national champion as the world champ is nothing but lidiculous. Don’t you Americans know how many countries are actually existing on this globe? Referr to your own dictionary, none of them says America also has the meaning of “the world.” Or are you the old fashioned guy who believes America still rules the world? Then first you have to learn the ABC of int’l politics.
If you really want to be the best team in the world, you have to prove your power simply by the result of the game, not by the names of players listed on your roster. Listing those teams in a ranking only considering “which league they belong to” is nothing but a kid’s masturbation. Because in this sport, a team consists of amateur players severally kills their opponent fulfilled with mighty superstars. That’s what actually happened in 2004 Athens Olympics (Japan-Australia) or 2009 WBC (DR-Netherlands). Without playing face-to-face, you can’t decide who’s really the best.
On the other hand, those IBAF’s int’l tournaments offers all teams the chance to COMPETE against the opponents literally from all over the world, and beat them to decide who’s #1. There’s no fictional rankings, instead there’s only a clear fact “who really won or lost the game”. The reason that the DR is called world champion isn’t just because they had stars like Jose Reyes on their roster. They won the IBAF sanctioned tournament whith those players, so they could claim the crown. Two world rankings based on just imaginations or result of the game, which one is more reliable?
By the way, I’ll give back the same words for you when you said “MLB doesn’t need baseball pretending countries.” Thank you very much for showing your ignorance. If MLB really don’t need the newcomers, then why are they running so many academies in those developing countries? Why do they help the construction of new ballparks there? Why do they send so many envoy coaches all over the world? And why are they expanding WBC to welcome more teams from the other half of the globe? That’s because they DO need those upcoming countries to expand their business further. Now they would be beaten by NFA or NBA if they only stick to Northen America, so they had to find out something new. While MLB officials are already realising it important, most surrounders seems to be still dumb.
Well, I will emphasize that your statement on the bottom line has a contradiction. You said on the first comment that 21U should include legitimate countries as well. Then you said “WE DON’T NEED YOU.” If you really don’t need us then why did you come here? What made you stuck to this series of commentary? I’m really sorry sir, but you doesn’t seems like a person who will be welcomed or respected here. I recommend you not to visit here anymore so that you can be happy in your Americas-limited “world.” People on this side may paragon it someday.
Come on man, you can’t spell NPB correctly!? I laughed my ass off when I saw you saying the word “NPL” instead. Well, maybe I should kindly forgive it because you can’t even spell Puerto Rico correctly as well, while you’re using it against me as your offensive weapon.
MLB is the baseball’s standard? They are pinnacle because they are? That’s nothing but the America’s arrogance. I’ll give you a famous Japanese proverb; The flog in the well knows nothing about the ocean. Apart from the rookie leagues in DR or Venezuela, all MLB games are usually held only in Northern America and that’s it. That’s the reason I described MLB as the domestic league of US and Canada. And what’s silly is that they call their best team “WORLD champion” even though they ONLY play against same American and Canadian teams.
I don’t refuse to admit MLB as the premier competition, but calling national champion as the world champ is nothing but lidiculous. Don’t you Americans know how many countries are actually existing on this globe? Referr to your own dictionary, none of them says America also has the meaning of “the world.” Or are you the old fashioned guy who believes America still rules the world? Then first you have to learn the ABC of int’l politics.
If you really want to be the best team in the world, you have to prove your power simply by the result of the game, not by the names of players listed on your roster. Listing those teams in a ranking only considering “which league they belong to” is nothing but a kid’s masturbation. Because in this sport, a team consists of amateur players severally kills their opponent fulfilled with mighty superstars. That’s what actually happened in 2004 Athens Olympics (Japan-Australia) or 2009 WBC (DR-Netherlands). Without playing face-to-face, you can’t decide who’s really the best.
On the other hand, those IBAF’s int’l tournaments offers all teams the chance to COMPETE against the opponents literally from all over the world, and beat them to decide who’s #1. There’s no fictional rankings, instead there’s only a clear fact “who really won or lost the game”. The reason that the DR is called world champion isn’t just because they had stars like Jose Reyes on their roster. They won the IBAF sanctioned tournament whith those players, so they could claim the crown. Two world rankings based on just imaginations or result of the game, which one is more reliable?
By the way, I’ll give back the same words for you when you said “MLB doesn’t need baseball pretending countries.” Thank you very much for showing your ignorance. If MLB really don’t need the newcomers, then why are they running so many academies in those developing countries? Why do they help the construction of new ballparks there? Why do they send so many envoy coaches all over the world? And why are they expanding WBC to welcome more teams from the other half of the globe? That’s because they DO need those upcoming countries to expand their business further. Now they would be beaten by NFA or NBA if they only stick to Northen America, so they had to find out something new. While MLB officials are already realising it important, most surrounders seems to be still dumb.
Well, I will emphasize that your statement on the bottom line has a contradiction. You said on the first comment that 21U should include legitimate countries as well. Then you said “WE DON’T NEED YOU.” If you really don’t need us then why did you come here? What made you stuck to this series of commentary? I’m really sorry sir, but you doesn’t seems like a person who will be welcomed or respected here. I recommend you not to visit here anymore so that you can be happy in your Americas-limited “world.” People on this side may paragon it someday though.
First of all, no one poster — ignorant fan like yourself or not — has a right to say who is or is not welcome on this site. It is no more yours than it is mine.
Now to the facts…..
You, ignorant fan, believe that a weekend tournament of politically picked teams can “prove who’s best”. Are you really so stupid that you think one of these tournaments makes a pick-up team equal to a team which has has played against the best in the world for ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTY-TWO GAMES a year??? If you believe that, you must drool when you speak.
The World Series is the WORLD Series because the leagues it draws from have the strongest gathering of baseball talent on earth. If you cannot watch the World Series and see how astronomically better those teams are than those competing in any other tournament on this planet, then you are profoundly obtuse.
Anyone who has played college or pro ball — or coached at those levels — can see the aforementioned talent void as well as the void between the play of 8 year-olds and that of college players.
Does the fact that teams are in the Major Leagues make them superior, ipso facto? Yes. Absolutely. The fact that a team went through the crucible of Major League competition for 162 games — and won at least 39% of them — means it is superior to ANY team that has not.
I realize that fact leaves you nothing more than the “arrogant Americans” argument.
Let us understand. I do NOT argue that American baseball is superior because Americans, ourselves, are superior. First, I believe the European culture is much superior to ours. Their families are stronger, their communities are stronger, they have better civi rights and justice systems — and astronomically better health care. They’ve made a better life than we have. I admire them for it.
Second, Major League baseball is about 30% Caribbeans with a few Japanese and Koreans and a smattering from Australia, etc. The majority are still Norte Americanos, but it it the mix of the highest talent on earth playing each other every day that makes MLB the greatest competition. And NOTHING else is REMOTELY as good. Below that, the USA offers the greatest gathering of amateur talent. It’s simply numbers.
Play all the little tournaments you want. It won’t change the fact.
So, the statement stands. WE DON’T NEED YOU to prove who’s best. We already know. Again, our SECOND-best team of college freshmen and sophomores have won three times as many Honkball Week tournaments as the #2 team (Cuba). We have nothing to prove to you.
You believe MLB “needs” to have baseball in the non-competitive countries. Wrong. MLB is not after your players. It wants more fans and their purchases wherever it can get them . If it wants there to be more players in anemic European baseball, it’s so they will buy more MLB cable channels and hats and jackets. They aren’t after your players, they’re after your money!
Japanese baseball is extremely good, but it doesn’t equal MLB. Why do the very top Japanese players want to play MLB? Because every quality athlete wants to test himself against the best. That’s in the US, not Japan. Why do Japanese fans stay up until 3 in the morning to watch their players compete in MLB? Why do players who can no longer compete in MLB come to Japan? Because they can command 2-3 times the salary of your native players. You tell me which league is superior. By a wide margin.
Look, my gripe isn’t with Japanese baseball (which you apparently didn’t play in high school or above). Japanese baseball is tremendous fun to watch. We have the greatest respect for Japanese baseball. Not only does Japan play the game with great precicision, but your coaches and players gladly learn from others and gladly teach others. (Japan has done wonderful work in Brazil, for example.)
And that’s the rub here. For many decades, American coaches have gladly taught the game in non-competitive countries; struggling mightily to make them better. I’ve done so, myself. What frosts us is that most of these countries will not do the necessary work to change their game. Instead, they engage in this charade you are personally part of. Rather than earn respect, they try to short cut their way to excelence through these fake championships and idiotic rankings. And silly chest-pounding news releases claiming to be what they are not.
Respect is earned — through HARD work in this game. If these also-ran baseball groups would pay their way rather than pretending and posturing, we would be right there to help them. We have no reason to respect the pretending which insults the game.
I didn’t meant that mister baseball is mine at all. But there are many baseball-related people on this website who’s working for European baseball, so they might think a guy who insults their own job will hurt them.
What’s your biggest problem is that you’re mixing up the objective of domestic league competition with international championship. The purpose for 162 games per year is to decide the best team of US and Canada. 144 games per year of NPB is to decide the Japanese champ. At this point, there’s no difference between the operation of any national leagues all over the world. Of course there IS a difference like salaries or playing infrastructures as you said, but those points ain’t change the main purpose of domestic leagues.
Your statement that “MLB is the world’s best because they have best players, salralies and infrastructure” isn’t different from a British saying “Champion of the premier league is better than the winner of the FIFA World Cup because we pay much and offer better fields.” While admitting those top leagues having better players or salaries, who can admit their best team a “World” champion as they even don’t allow teams to join the competition from the other part of the globe?
MLB’s champ is a great team? Yes. How about the one who won the Premier league? Of course. Do they have great players or status? Why not. I have repeatedly admitted that fact many times. And I do watch many World Series games here too. But still then they are no more than the best team among respective US and UK. Even if there’s a great competition played, any domestic league can NEVER decide a world champion by itself, because that’s not their purpose at all and they aren’t specifically desined liked that. Deciding the World champion is the business of Int’l games.
Well, team USA has won Honkbal week or defunct World Cup many times, I know it. But you have only talked about your second lined players. How about those top pros? The fact is, team USA composed of allstar-level MLB players has earned NOTHING at all 3 editions of WBC. They even hadn’t been a finalist yet!! US born MLB players are fantastic in their leagues, and they should have been great at int’l stage when they were a college students. But nowadays they have proved themselves as a loser on their own staged tournament. Real champs like DR can play well both on domestic and int’l stage. You have nothing to prove? Nah, I don’t think so.
You say that developing countries made a shortcut. Well, it might be possible but there’s enough reason for it. They HAD to make a choice for the short cut when MLB decided to launch WBC as the new tournament. Before the WBC era, the two baseball worlds were seperated so those small countries could play with each other, while baseball for their countries being a small minor sport. Then in 2006 the WBC started and both sides were suddenly connected, so they had to compete with huge Norte Americanos and Asians while their own resources were still small.It’s tough task to fight against those teams, but if you are easily defeated that’s negative for the brand new tournament. They wanted to make the tournament competitive enough. So they had to make an instant policy for reinforcement to make themselves able to compete with dyasties as far as they could.
And that’s actually based on MLB’s advisory too. I have a friend who has played in Germany, France and pitched in Spain this year, and also has an experience as a coach of French NT; some readers of mister baseball may know who he is. He told me that France wanted to put more countrymens of their own on the roster to play the qualifier of WBC in Jupiter, but MLB didn’t want them to do that. Some players who’s not originally from France was chosen by MLB, and they even changed the team’s manager who led the team in Euro which was held just before WBC. If you are a devotee of MLB, I’m not against that but how come you can blame the shorcuts by those facts?
And as I told you, not all countries doesn’t want to do such instant stuffs anymore. I’ve already told the examples of UK, Italy and Czech before. Especially, Czech has already done anything with their own guys for decades to change things better; I really respect them from my heart. They are working on their under categories, and it can move things forward in upcoming years. So don’t worry, they ARE working hard for the next generations. Of course it’ll cost time, because they don’t have much as MLB has in their hands, but there’s still a possibility for baseball to earn more competitors. And that’s a positive thing for the whole sport’s future.
The continued ramblings of an ignorant fan: “I want it be that way; so if I believe enough, eventually it will be.” Totally delusional.
Your comparison of soccer to baseball is fantastically inapt. That’s because soccer is a world sport and baseball is not — no matter how long you hold your breath and wish.
The FIFA World Cup earns $2.5 billion a year. Can your little IBAF tournaments clear a thousandth of that? No.
If, as you claim, MLB is just a national league and IBAF is a world organization with equal competition, why can’t they make money from it?
Here’s a hint: THEY DON’T HAVE THE PLAYERS to earn that level of interest. MLB DOES.
Begin to understand, Oh Wall of Ignorance?
You claim MLB is just a local league. But players from every nation on earth are welcome to try for an MLB team. Those from Puerto Rico, the Dominican, Canada, Japan, Korea, occasionally Australia make MLB teams. And each of those players will tell you playing MLB was the pinnacle of his career. European players try and fail. And fail. And fail and fail and fail. Baseball having been played in Europe for over 100 years, no European player has ever played a full year of Major League Baseball.
And it’s certainly not for MLB having failed to try. That hero and sage of Dutch baseball, the Einborn guy, had 64 MLB at-bats in 4 years. MLB gave him chance after chance for 4 years; all he could earn were 16 at-bats a year. Finally, they gave up. Within the past few years, a Dutch pitcher named Van Den Hurk tried with several MLB clubs. Repeatedly, he either was on the injured list or got his brains beat out. At 95 mph, he had the talent. But, like all Europeans he couldn’t compete at that level. Say it with me now: HE WASN’T GOOD ENOUGH.
Van den Hurk is now pitching in Korea, and a star there.
Look, MLB has wasted millions on European prospects. There’s now a 20 year-old Italian catcher who they’ve spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to sign. After 3-4 years of minor league ball, I saw him in this year’s European championship. Having coached college players for some decades I can unequivocally tell you there are today in the US at least 1,000 20 year-old catchers who are better than this Italian kid — but who will not be drafted. He can’t block. He can’t frame. His hitting is very, very average. The moral of this story is like an old North Carolina farmer once put it: “You can take a hunting dog and feed him sand and gravel, and water him and run him all you want. You’ll still never get him to pass a brick. In case you can’t understand the parable, MLB can spend all they want on Dutch or German or Italian players; they won’t make any of them MLB calibre — until they have found a way to fundamentally and drastically change European baseball.
That’s why the French say MLB did not want them sending local players to a WBC qualifier. MLB were trying to protect them from humiliation on the field. Same reason the Israeli “national” team had just 3 Israelis on the roster…none of whom played. (By the way, France improved its performance in the European tournament this year — by playing guys from St. Martin in the Caribbean. The European motto lives: “If you can’t earn success, buy it.”)
And you want to compare your little IBAF “world” tournaments to Major League Baseball.
As to why a USA team has not won a WBC tournament, the short answer is that it hasn’t yet been important to us. Yes, MLB created the tournament as an answer to Olmpic rejection — and as a way to garner more paying fans in the non-baseball countries. MLB also hoped the tournament would prove a bridge to the upcoming season for American fans.
But American MLB players aren’t interested. One can understand that each player on a Major League roster has millions of dollars on the line, and that it is a long, grueling season. They, like the amateur players who eventually provide 70% of the MLB roster position, do not need to prove their place atop the baseball world. So they are not inclined to risk injury or distract from their preparation on a “challenge” which really means nothing. Why waste a lot of effort to prove what everyone but the most blind extremists already know?
American fans, in the same way, have shown little interest in the WBC. In fact, MLB has had a tough time getting fans into the seats for US games — even when they give tickets away.
The WBC is a fun championship to watch. I enjoy it, especially because the Japanese and Caribbeans bring styles of play which I believe envigorate the game.
But settle the question of who’s best in the world? Give me a break. That issue is long-since settled.
I understand that you’re wedded to your illusions. Your problem.
The issue is well settled. But, I tell you what, you can have the last word. Since everything intelligent on this issue has been said several times over, I will neither read it nor reply.
Oh. Good luck with your little club’s effort to change the shape of world baseball. MLB has tried for decades without success; but your little group of fans will no doubt turn everything upside down any day now!
Comparing football to baseball is because they are our futuristic model of our sport. The world that every players can have a chance to get to the premier competition, not based on where they come from but their own talent and efforts. To make the baseball true grobal sport is our objective.
But if you admit baseball is a regional sport, then it’s more weird to call MLB’s championship a “world” series. If baseball itself is just a niche sport as you say, then we can’t find any no grobalism inside it. How can any regional activity call their finest one a “world” champion? Are you drunk or something? You may call it pan-pacific series or something, while those countries are all surrounding the pacific sea, but that’s it. Following your logic sincerely, then the MLB’s final’s current name isn’t suitable at all.
Well, I would say nothing to you anymore. We can’t waste our time to talk with a guy like you. Instead we’ll prove ourselves by the result of our projects. Those are my last words for you; we can talk about the past but never can’t change it. We can do both for our future. So good bye forever and have a nice day.