A Small Note to the Lemur's Coverage of the World Baseball Classic

Yes, it's amusing, shocking, amazing or all of the above when Team USA loses on the mercy rule to Puerto Rico. (And yes, kids, this officially puts me deep in the black of finding things to fill the bloghole with today.)

No, it doesn't mean that there is something wrong with us as a country that we're not giving this august experience the prestige and importance that it deserves. And the same goes for the Olympics, or the Little League World Series, or any other short-series experience that you can name.

What it means, really, is that Baseball Is A Funny Game, prone to all kinds of low sample size weirdness. If the worst team in baseball somehow found itself into the World Series against the best team, it would win a third of the time.

And that's just factual, really; it happens every year in MLB with top teams struggling against crud teams. Greatness is determined over time and at bats and innings and lots of them, and while jumping to conclusions is fun, it also leaves you looking real silly real fast. Consider the case of the mighty Cubans, who were being written up as clearly the best team in the WBC before today, when they went down meekly, 6-0, to the Japanese. I caught their act today, and it looked like they didn't have a single player who was at all interested in working a pitch count. (It also doesn't mean that Japan, with their 0.79 team ERA, is a clear next best pick; that's a lineup that's utterly devoid of power.)

Are the Americans prone to treating the WBC as Spring Training in different uniforms? Of course; they should. Will there ever be a truly meaningful international event in baseball, a la the soccer World Cup? Well, maybe, but if so, it won't be an annual event that happens in March; it'll be a lot more involved than that, because it will have a heckuva lot more countries involved.

And if you need to rail against a country and their culture for what happens in a short series sports event... well, that just says more about the writer than it does the event. It's not such a good thing, either.