I think it was more of the MLB team organizations that were treating it like spring training. I truly believe that the players were playing harder than they normally would be at this time of year, but Martinez had to get guys into game situations that he wouldn't have if the tournament was held in the summer or fall. Of course Cuba was better prepared, they were already into their regular season.
And the Koreans & Japanese had already finished their spring trainings; and the Dominicans & Venezuelans finished their winter leagues 2 months ago.
Yeah I have to agree with this quote. I think the best players are probably still all American for the most part, but throughout the whole games it seemed like America lacked the passion for it, while many of the other teams like Cuba, Korea, and Japan wanted to win badly as a team for their country. It also showed the contrasting styles of the different teams. Great to watch. Ichiro, the absolute King of Mr. Cool/Reserved, was 100% emotionally invested in the team. He made a lot of bold and uncharacteristic statements that caught even the Japanese media off guard. It was clear how much these games meant to him, much more so than the upcoming regular season (could be because Seattle is not a very good team). Regardless, he showed passion and was the emotional team leader along with the legendary manager Oh (the best Japanese player to ever play the sport in history). Anyway, I hope these games actually does provide a boost for international competition in the sport especially after it will be dropped from the Olympics. Will this be the same thing that happened to the US basketball team and force the US to realize that you can't just slap a team together of all-stars and beat everyone and anyone on any given day? Just want to see more great international competition.
In Japan, they are playing the last few exhibition games before the season starts I think in a week or two. Don't remember the exact dates. Still if that was perceived to be a potential problem, shouldn't the US players have started their training a bit earlier? I think it just showed that many, not necessarily everyone, thought that the US team could play at the spring training level or without all the preparations that other teams took and still handidly beat everyone else.
Thanks for the clarification. There's no way they could have gotten the players to sign off on starting early. It's a long grind of a season (and rightfully most if not all of the players & mgmt would prioritize the upcoming season over the WBC) & most of the players already think that ST starts too early & lasts too long. They need to push it back to the proposed All-Star Week or (preferably) right after the World Series. They need to tweak the tiebreakers as well (the fact that the US lost the tiebreaker w/ Japan based on a single unearned run allowed by Japan - a run that won the head-to-head matchup for the US against Japan at that - is pretty silly). Big congrats to Japan - solid, fundamentally sound team approach paid big dividends.
