A New Kind of March Madness

The provisional rosters have been announced for this spring's inaugural World Baseball Classic, scheduled for March 3 through March 20th. Games will be played in the US, Japan and Puerto Rico.

There were forty-two players named to the United States' "Dream Team" roster including Barry Bonds, Johnny Damon, Derek Jeter, Ken Griffey Jr., Chipper Jones, Lance Berkman, Derek Lee, Roger Clemens and Red Sox stars Jason Varitek and Mike Timlin.

The Dominican Republic roster is just plain scary. To rattle off some names: David Ortiz, Manny Ramirez, Vlad Guerrero, Albert Pujols, Pedro Martinez, Robinson Cano, Rafael Furcal, Miguel Tejada, Alfonso Soriano, Alex Rodriguez (maybe) and Adrian Beltre. Not a bad team for a country of approximately nine million people which is only slightly larger than the population of New York City. Geez.

The Chinese roster has eight "Chens". Only one player was named to the Netherlands roster: Andruw Jones. Apparently he is going to play every position a la Bugs Bunny.

There is definitely potential for the World Baseball Classic to be an exciting tournament but I am skeptical about whether the players named to the provisional rosters will actually participate. There is already chatter from big names such as Alex Rodriguez and Roger Clemens that they may sit out and I have no doubt that Barry Bonds will have the sudden onset of a mysterious unnamed injury to weasel his way out of it too.

Even if all the star players do participate, it may still be tough to get a captive audience within the United States. March is usually reserved for filling out NCAA Basketball Tournament brackets and biding time until our favorite Major League teams take the field. It will also be a big transition to transfer our "regional loyalties" to "national loyalties".

In other words, I just don't know if I'll be able to root for Derek Jeter or against Manny and Big Papi.

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On a completely unrelated note (file this under "things you never needed to know"), I am totally addicted to Fox's TV Series "24". Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep.