Team USA – Over Confident for the World Baseball Classic?

You never know what’s going to happen in a baseball game. You can be a 100\1 shot playing a 1\9 shot favorite and still come out on top. This is why we play the game. Obviously the favorite is going to win 9 out of 10 times but still you have to give Mexico credit for knocking out the dominant USA team. If you noticed throughout the whole classic, USA really didn’t play there best game. They didn’t play particularly bad, they just didn’t play like they normally would play in a big game such as the World Series, etc. You know when you watch a World Series game or a Championship game such as the Yankees and the Red Sox, the intensity is very high and you can really feel the players reactions. I didn’t feel that when watching the WBC. The main reason Team USA didn’t come out on top was because they were over confident and the other teams just wanted it more, plain and simple.

Sports Illustrated said “Team USA lacked “Passion”, and it cost them the entire WBC. It is true that we were beaten at our own game, but the way baseball has evolved worldwide, I would say our own game is being perfected by other countries as well. It sure was proven the other day. We do have the best players in the world on Team USA, it’s just an A+ player against a D player really doesn’t matter if they intensity is on the other side. A lot of players that play on other countries teams play in the MLB, so it’s basically our countries players supporting the countries they were born in, but it still made for quite a showing. Team USA was obviously the favorite coming into the WBC, but a close second was the Dominican Republic, which might be an easy choice to win the whole thing now. Teams that are still in it are Cuba, Dominican Republic, Korea, and Japan. They all have a powerful ballclub and will fight till that last pitch is thrown.

America is known for it’s dominant force in most of the things they do, but when it comes to sports, there is no guarantee you’re going to win. It’s simply anyones game. I’m happy for the other countries that are still in the tournament. They deserve to show off there skills because this is a chance to show that other countries have great talent also, and to show that other countries take the game we perfected seriously. Good luck to all of the teams still in the tournament.