Baseball In The Air - WBC

With Spring Training already underway, Japan is starting to get back into baseball. Most immediately, the hype is starting to build for this year's World Baseball Classic, which begins on March 5th. (Ichiro has been gracing the covers of the local papers for days. Unfortunately, the Seattle Mariners put the kaibosh on potential plans for him to actually pitch . . . .) Japan won the last (and first) Classic back in 2006, upsetting the Cubans in the Final game.

While in the US, most of the news is about which stars are not playing in the Classic, in Japan (as with the Olympics last year), the stars wouldn't dream of not playing for their country. This year's squad includes stars that have jumped to MLB like Ichiro, Fukudome, Iwamura, and Matsuzaka, as well as many of the best players in Japan, like Fighter's SP Yu Darvish and Tiger's closer Kyuji Fujikawa. The rosters of the US, Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Canada, and others have a nice helping of MLB superstars.

One of the pool's earlier rounds is at Tokyo Dome, and we thought long and hard about making the trip. But the game that was available was on a Sunday night - a tough time to make the trip with Jacob. The final round is in Dodger Stadium. We'll be watching on TV!