What do you think about the World Baseball Classic? Personally I think it’s a unique concept that is largely harmless. Every three years is not overkill. It’s just not that easy to work into the calendar, which leads to problems, especially with pitchers. But once you get into the knockout round, it’s fun. Only thing I might do is go from 16 countries down to eight. Highlight the best teams and don’t waste time with 16-1 games early on.

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Chan-Ho Park will skip the World Baseball Classic in order to focus on winning a rotation spot with the Phillies. Many assumed he would be a bullpen arm but Park is driving towards being their 5th starter behind Cole Hamels (BlueClaws 2003), Brett Myers, Joe Blanton, and Jamie Moyer. Park will compete with Kyle Kendrick (04-06), JA Happ (2005), and Carlos Carrasco (2006).

The most interesting part about this is Park breaking down into tears when making the announcement in his native South Korea. I don’t think one US player has broken down into tears when he announced his intentions to play or skip the WBC.

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We briefly mentioned this in our Winter Tour live blog, that we’ll be doing another live blog during FanFest, which we also mentioned is Saturday, March 7th, beginning at noon. So much more to come on this, but keep that day clear on your calendars.

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Part of FanFest will be a viewing of that day’s USA/Canada World Baseball Classic game on our video board. Canada’s 2006 WBC roster included former BlueClaw Scott Mathieson (2004), as well as Justin Morneau, Jason Bay, and Erik Bedard.

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This entry was posted on Saturday, January 17th, 2009 at 8:25 am and is filed under BlueClaws Events, FanFest, General Baseball, Phillies, World Baseball Classic. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.