World Baseball Championship - Great Game Without Player Who Look Like Pro Wrestlers

[Median Democrat]

I am not a huge baseball fan, but it was actually very interesting to watch yesterday's game between Korea and Japan. Neither team had any HR mashers, but it was well played game with well placed shots into the gap. I once had a teacher who was a pro baseball player long ago who used to tell these great stories about how the game was played, and how strategic the game was with the focus simply on putting the ball in play. Neither the Korean nor the Japansese teams looked as big and muscular as the American team, yet they were in the championship. Also, despite the lack of HRs, it was a very exciting game.

[benld74]

1. MLB has been SELLING the HR game for years now,

telling fans its more exiciting, more runs, more fun. Shrinking the size of the new ballparks helps as well, with the myth.

[Occam Bandage]

5. That's just ridiculous.

MLB responds to market pressure. It doesn't dictate it. Baseball purists have been complaining that fans love home runs and high-scoring games ever since, and I am not making this up, the late 1800s.

[cloudbase]

2. I'm partial to seeing small ball played.

Home runs can be exciting, but nothing matches a game of small ball.

[tekisui]

3. Agreed 100%. Homeruns are axciting, only when they are infrequent, IMO.

I like the stolen bases, the sacrifice bunts and sacrifice fly. I like the batter wearing a pitcher down with 10 foul tips, waiting to get the perfect pitch for a single. Small ball, fundamentals are acts of beauty.

[Occam Bandage]

4. I loved each of the Japan-Korea games played during the WBC.

They're great teams, their players were conditioned and ready, and they played hard. The American team (and the Latin teams using MLB players) looked loose, lazy, and distracted by comparison. It's no accident that Korea and Japan were in the final; both teams deserved to be there.

[RB TexLa]

6. And you have to love that the bad decision of the night was with 1st base open to pitch to a guy

who wasn't going to hit a home run.


The Korean team does have some power hitters, but I do get your point.

[4lbs]

7. Yes, Korea deserved to lose that game after that boneheaded decision

I was laughing to myself when that happened, thinking "Surely, they're not actually going to pitch to him, he's already 3 for 5 with 2 RBI!"

Ichiro is one of the best Japanese hitters (hitter, not slugger) in that country's history and one of the best hitters in all of the MLB. He finished last night 4 for 6 (.667) with 4 RBI.

[madinmaryland]

8. What's really scary is that it is safer to post a sports thread in GD than

it is in the sports forum.

The Barry Bonds apologists would have been all over you if you had posted this over there.

[Nye Bevan]

9. I loved the WBC and I love small ball

Give me a perfectly executed squeeze bunt in the bottom of the 9th to win the game any day, over some steroid-taking freak hitting a monstrous home run.

And I know I am in a small minority but I really liked the WBC. Pundits like Mike Francesa disparage it as "Exhibition Games", but when players are wearing their country's uniform these are much less exhibition games than a 4th place team playing a 5th place team in September.

[Supersedeas]

10. to a baseball purist that was a great game -- a true classic