Thursday, March 09, 2006

World Baseball Classic - Early thoughts

I shouldn’t be as happy as I am right now – at least, I don’t think so. My team, Team Canada, just lost 9-1 to Mexico and, barring a massive upset of team South Africa beating the United States, we’re eliminated from the World Baseball Classic.

But I can’t be that sad about this. Team Canada won a classic, nailbiter of a game against South Africa on Tuesday. Then on Wednesday, we beat the US in one of the largest upsets in recent memory. We weren’t supposed to be 2-0 going into the Mexico game and even the most hopeful optimist wouldn’t have thought that Canada would have led the US by eight runs at one point. Canada looked, if just for a moment, like a place very much like the US. We were proving that we do more then just play hockey, despite whatever the commentators on ESPN 2 were saying.

And this loss should have crushed us back down to Earth. We lost, in a convincing way – Nine to one. We were out-hit, out-pitched, out-played by a superior team. And we held them to one run after the 6th inning. We won two games, almost crushing the US in one, and we did it with a patchwork team comprised mostly of minor leaguers and baseball journeymen.

This can’t take that feeling away from me; not even a 100 – 0 loss, called after the first inning, could take this away from me.

Long live the Baseball Classic – and thanx, Team Canada, for the memories.

More to come shortly...

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