Well, that's it for Australia in the inaugural World Baseball Classic. The Dominican Republic just beat them 6-4 in their final game so the Aussies are 0-3 for the Tournament. 6-4 is pretty good on the back of 2-0 against the Venezuelans and the humiliation of the 10-0 Mercy rule drubbing at the hands of the (in name only) Italians. Admittedly the Dominicans seemed to have their feet off the accelerator as they did enough to beat the Aussies in the final, but I really reckon defensively our guys showed enough to compete at this level. You'd have to excuse the anaemic offense in part through not playing against quality pitching for some time, in part because of the missing Japanese league playing guys and the injured Chris Snelling.
I guess the big one though is the lack of the domestic competition since it's demise some years ago now. This has meant guys like Pete Moylan has been selling pharmaceuticals instead of working on the control of his 94mph sidearm fastball. Still, he had enough to make Marco Scutaro's knees buckle as he watched the third pitch bend in for a standing K2, and we were reminded that the gap between an amateur 28 year old with more tattoos than games' experience at this level and a 20 million dollar player is not nearly as much as you might think.

I couldn't help thinking Billy Beane might have been looking closely at a few diamonds in the rough that he could pick up for a song and then sell 6 months later. It did remind me somewhat of the recent Australian player who got a run in the German league at $20,000 for the year. The best part was they were letting him pay the money off in monthly installments.

Lots of highlights for mine, mostly pitching in the second game where I was late back to work while I stayed at home and watched Phill Brassington frustrate the big hitting Venezuelans with a dancing knuckleball. At the time thought the pitch limit was going to stop us (I had thought we were in danger of scoring a run or two) but it just let us see Pete Moylan who entertained and frightened on the way to a couple of innings littered with nasty pitching, strikeouts, and walking the bases full. John Deeble could bear no more when he walked a run in, but I'd have loved to see him stay out there and scare a few more major leaguers - one run was enough to beat us, so 3 or 6 more wasn't going to matter. And really, we weren't going to remember the game because of a small losing margin, we were more likely to remember it for the improbability of Pete slicing through the heart of their order and in the process embarrassing some of the best in the game. Shit, it was no wonder he had a grin from ear to ear for the duration of his time on the mound.

Sour grapes warning:
The Italian team pissed me off. If this tournament was about spreading the game to all parts of the world, then why was it that you could qualify for the Italian team by having a grandparent from Italy for Christ's sake. What - you know that if you put up a team of native born Italians you'd just go there and get hammered? So now what, kids in Florence are casting aside their soccer boots to find a glove and play catch because their adopted Italian-American heroes have managed to quash the might Australia before being thumped by the remainder of their pool? Gimme a break you imposters. If you're not good enough to make the team for your native born country then go and sit down and watch like the rest of us.
Sour grapes off.

This tournament has reaffirmed that anything can happen in tournament baseball - USA going down to Canada and Korea knocking over Japan. Jeez, the full strength Australian Olympic team beat Japan twice on their way to getting robbed of the gold medal at the Athens Olympics (get this: a home plate umpire who doesn't speak English, and no translators. Only in the Olympics).
But I've gone off-topic. I really reckon the likes of Pedro Martinez and Manny Ramirez are going to regret not suiting up for this tourney as it moves into the next rounds. Tournament baseball simply throws up so many surprises that it's impossible to go into the game and not think your team has a chance. Imagine the might of team USA going down to the Cubans 2-1 in an extra innings final?

As the Aussies left the field at the end of the game, a player I couldn't identify was videotaping the Venezuelan fans going nuts above their dugout. Tell me that guy didn't have a great time.

While I'll always remember that a Real Estate agent and part time drummer from Victoria (whose clients still think he's in the country as he carries on working via email) had a self taught knuckleball tie up the Venezuelans until his pitch count was reached, I'm looking forward to what other stories are thrown up by this tournament, and also to see if baseball Australia can capitalise and re-establish a league of our own.