World Baseball Classic Preview

The innaugural World Baseball Classic kicks off today amidst high hopes from MLB executives and tappered enthusiam amongst players. The owners were for it, except of course for George Steinbrenner who wants to protect his investments.

Everyone's biggest fear from the owners to commissioner Bud Selig to the players themselves is of course the possibility of a major injury occuring. Of course injuries could occur just the same in a spring training game or while washing your car. If you don't believe me just ask Jeff Kent.

However, it's the idea that they are more likely to happen in a contrived and meaningless pre season tournament with a playoff game type atmosphere that has everyone worried. There's more than just bragging rights at stake here. This is the Olympics for baseball, a chance for these guys to play for pride and country. The temptation to go full out before their bodies are ready will be there. Especially for the pitchers.

WBC organizers insist that strict pitch counts and innings limits will be enforced but if a country's championship hopes are on the line whose to say a player won't volunteer to pitch for longer than they should. The risk for injury is too great.

That's why this tournament never should have happened. It's the kind of crazy idea that I'm supposed to pitch to MLB in a letter and get laughed at. The kind of thing that Baseball Weekly writers are supposed to come up with mock teams for. The kind of thing that a Japanese guy and Canadian guy are supposed to argue about in a bar. Whose better Ichiro or Jason Bay? It's not actually supposed to happen.

And yet it has and now the entire baseball world will hold their breathe while it does, hoping, wishing, praying that their team's star player doesn't get hurt. Unfortunately, that's not going to happen. It's a bad idea and bad ideas are meant to blow up in the organizer's face. The only way that's going to happen is if someone or several someones get hurt. And I'm not talking about pulling a hamstring. I'm talking about Carson Palmer knee injury kind of hurt. Career ending injuries. The kind that make this tournament an entire chapter in the baseball encyclopedia and not just a footnote in the section on globalization.

The 2 players with the greatest odds of getting hurt are the two players with the most to lose. The best positional player and pitcher. That being the Yankees Alex Rodriguez, the reigning AL MVP, and the Twins Johan Santana, a former Cy Young award winner. I obviously hope that they and everyone else make it through the tournament in one piece. But if I were a betting man I would bet the mortgage on a major injury occuring to a top star. The only question is which one?

With that having been said I'm still going to watch the tournament but I hereby reserve the right to say I told you so. As for my Shames-o-matic prediction I think it will be South Africa and Italy in the finals with South Africa winning it all. Just kidding. Those countries shouldn't even be in the tournament. The real winner will be Velenzuela who will ride their rotation of Santana, Carlos Zambrano, and Freddy Garcia to the win over the Dominican Republic.