2:39PM Tuesday
March 12, 2013

Is 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...