Let’s Play Two ... or More

SAN DIEGO —  The inaugural World Baseball Classic, for 20 years a far-off vision that cluttered desk space in the New York offices of Major League Baseball and its players’ union, will play this weekend to more sellout crowds, more flag-waving nationalism and more ebullient baseball officials.

Spurned by the International Olympic Committee, replaced in America by football as the national pastime and beset by a steroid scandal that stained revered players, baseball hopes this tournament is a step toward reestablishing its corporate and grass-roots footing.

“People got into it,” said Don Fehr, executive director of the Major League Baseball Players Assn. “This allowed them to look at baseball in a fundamentally different way.”

Two weeks ago, a tournament whose brackets held 16 teams from six continents began with a game in Tokyo. Today, in the semifinals at Petco Park, Korea will play Japan and the Dominican Republic will play Cuba, the winners to meet in Monday night’s final.

By then, the WBC will have sold more than 700,000 tickets over seven venues from Japan to Puerto Rico, received decent television ratings despite being spread over several channels, seen brisk sales of its tournament-specific merchandise, and for the most part staged competitive, even engaging, games.

And perhaps the most promising aspect of the WBC is that it did not require a dominant U.S. team to make it work in the U.S. Team USA, which lost three of its six games despite a roster of All-Stars, was eliminated by Mexico on Thursday night.

“Frankly, it’s better than I thought it would be,” Commissioner Bud Selig said. “The fact is, we again did something different in the face of some cynicism, and it’s worked. There’s no doubt in my mind that the game is going to become more popular worldwide as a result of this.”

First proposed by the players during labor negotiations in the mid-1980s, and after those two decades spent variously shelved and rekindled, the WBC arrived with a near $50-million budget, a goal to boost worldwide revenue and awareness of the sport, and an armload of potential troubles.

Organizers were criticized for staging the event during the major leagues’ spring training, risking injuries to players coming out of their off-seasons and jeopardizing player preparedness for the regular season. Washington National reliever Luis Ayala suffered a major elbow injury while pitching for Mexico on Thursday and is expected to miss the season while recovering from Tommy John surgery. The Nationals had requested that Ayala, who had a bone spur removed from his elbow in the off-season, not be allowed to pitch in the WBC. Team President Tony Tavares said MLB denied the request.

“Major League Baseball made a terrible judgment that resulted in a significant loss to this club,” Tavares told MLB.com. “What are they doing to do? Say, ‘I’m sorry?’ Sorry doesn’t get it.”

Skeptics predicted the games would be played at spring-training speed, with exhibition-game restraint, and therefore meaningless. And while that was evident at times for Team USA, whose failure to reach the semifinals was the tournament’s notable surprise, games played between natural rivals of Latin America and Asia created massive interest and resulted in enthralling baseball.

“Watching the other countries play and seeing where they’re at is encouraging,” said Michael Barrett, a catcher for Team USA. “Baseball has come a long way in a lot of countries. The sport is growing. We tend to forget that because it’s not the most popular sport in America right now.”

There has been no official announcement of an intention to continue the tournament, but MLB and union officials said they plan to hold it again in 2009 and then every four years after that, the preparation for which will start next week.

Despite private complaints that the tournament was unfairly obliging to Team USA, whose game times and hotel accommodations were viewed as superior, the leaders of other national baseball federations appear committed to future events. Cuba and Mexico, for instance, have asked to play host to first-round games in 2009.

“In general terms, we are satisfied,” Mexican delegation head Alejandro Hutt said. “One of the main obligations of the tournament, to promote the game, has been accomplished. This had a big impact on our country.

“In Mexico, the No. 1 sport is soccer, and we need to take advantage of these types of events to grow baseball.”

Mexico’s experience, like others’, was not entirely without frustrations. The Mexican Baseball Federation tried to stage two pre-tournament exhibition games in Mexico, lined up corporate sponsorships and negotiated a deal to broadcast games on Mexican radio, all of which Hutt believed would further the ideals of the tournament, but they were thwarted by WBC leaders.

Of the radio contract, Hutt said, “They were expecting more money. We told them they expected money that was not available in our market.”

Perhaps no countries benefited from the tournament more than Korea and Japan, whose own professional leagues have long existed in the shadows of the American major leagues. At 6-0, Korea is the WBC’s only unbeaten team, including two wins against rival Japan. Nearly 40,000 fans, most rooting for Korea, attended Wednesday night’s game at Angel Stadium, which ended with Korean players joyously planting their flag on the pitcher’s mound.

“Of course, one of the two teams, yes, from [Saturday’s] game will make it to the finals, and I think it’s very, very important in Asian baseball obviously,” Korea Manager In Sik Kim said. “And also [for] the WBC. I hope that with this tournament that there will be a baseball boom in Asia, and I believe that that is the No. 1 priority for WBC, as well, is to popularize baseball throughout the world.”

Cuba, an amateur baseball powerhouse for decades and Fidel Castro’s pride, advanced through the hyper-competitive Puerto Rico brackets. Team Cuba was nearly excluded from the tournament because of the U.S. economic embargo against its communist government. Though it will not gain financially from its participation, Cuban baseball has gained in status, and it will not be lost on Castro that his team is here, and America’s is not.

“I do feel regret and I feel sorry that they’re not here, because it is wonderful baseball, what you see in the U.S.,” Cuba Manager Higinio Velez said. “We follow what the Major League Baseball players do in the U.S. and the way they play, and they’re the organizers, they put together this whole Classic. We have high esteem for the U.S. players.”

Rather than judging the viability of the tournament in the coming weeks, as it might have expected, the WBC steering committee will focus on modifying the event, including changes in venue, participating countries, the time of year it will be played and whether to stage off-year play-in tournaments, as soccer’s World Cup does.

What the organizers do know, for sure, is that it will be played.

“We’ll come together and look at what worked and what didn’t,” said Paul Archey, MLB’s senior vice president of international business operations. “I think the conclusion we’ll come to is, how can we not do this again?”