Sports

The World Baseball Classic needs to take a page from Dave Chappelle and Baseketball

By March 6, 2013June 18th, 2018No Comments
world-baseball-classic

world-baseball-classicIs there a way to add legitimate interest to the World Baseball Classic? It’s hard to imagine. The attempt to wedge this Olympic-styled, world-captivating pipedream event into a tiny timeframe is laughable, especially considering that, at this time of the year, all baseball fans care about is whether their team’s top prospect successfully completed the bunting drill or whether he’ll start the season with the Double-A or Triple-A affiliate.

The game’s best players seldom participate, which is to be expected. Why sacrifice big league bucks for an exhibition? The national pride argument is overplayed as well. If that were the case, you wouldn’t have to convince the game’s biggest names to suit up.

Nonetheless, could you have imagined if they had attempted to launch this competition decades ago? Puerto Rico has Roberto Clemente and Orlando Cepeda. The Dominican Republic has Juan Marichal. That’s it. That’s literally all I can think of. Now, if you built the American team, where the hell would you start? Or end?

The only plus for the WBC is that today’s game of baseball is indeed more of the world’s game. Baseball is undoubtedly America’s pastime, but Football is America’s game. To that, there is no debate. So what could they do to make WBC more interesting, more watchable, less sucky? Here are a few ideas:

1. Instead of baseball, have the country’s play BASEketball. Surely when you saw this movie you wanted to play, or maybe you have. It’s time to bring the game to the world’s main stage.

2. Hold a draft, similar to that of the Chappelle Show’s Racial Draft. At least we could be intrigued to see how Justin Verlander interacts with his new Chinese Taipei teammates.

3. Bring in the fences, shorten the base paths. Smaller field = more scoring. It ain’t rocket science, kids.

What else could be done? Do you watch the WBC? Let us know if you think the competition can be salvaged.

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