No, it doesn't make you a bad fan. Though I would imagine that the people who support MLS but not international soccer are a very small group. But since I am part of the even smaller group of people who would rather than watch international baseball played by major leaguers than major league baseball played by major leaguers, I cannot really throw any stones even if I wanted to. I follow many sports. In no particular order, there is baseball, basketball, football, hockey, soccer, cricket, rugby union, rugby league, and during the twenty minutes every four years it is on television, curling. The one thing that they all have in common and share with every other sport that I am familiar with is that they have international competition. And yes, they even have international American Football tournaments. In every single one except football, for obvious reasons, and baseball, for selfish reasons, international competition is taken more seriously and played at a higher level than the local leagues. Even people who makes millions in domestic sporting competitions throw it all on the line when dressed in their national colors. Heck, except for the American players at the WBC, even baseball players seem to care more about international play. And that is the way that I like it. As a Yankee fan, I was never concerned that Mark Texeira was hurt playing for Team USA. I was concerned that he was hurt and miss the entire WBC and when that is over I will care that he is missing from the Yankee lineup. As a Yankee fan I don't care that Robinson Cano may be hurt playing in the tournament. I just don't really want him to win. That's my opinion. I could be wrong.
You've never been more right. The only club team I could ever truly care about is the Green Bay packers, because they are at least minimally community owned. Fact is the rest are just rich guys play toys.
True and I love the bundesliga. However it's tough to be a strong fan, for me at least, of a team 4000 miles away.
Major League Baseball has existed in some fashion since the 1870s. International baseball as far as being something to aspire for a major leaguer has existed for 7 years. USA Baseball itself did not exist til the 1970s. You're changing a culture that has existed for a long time and it won't be done overnight. The '92 Dream Team came along and spread a lot of international goodwill in the game of basketball, the '94 Dream Team II led by Shaq amongst others subsequently destroyed all that goodwill treating the whole tournament like a joke and mocking players from other countries, and it wasn't til Mike Krzyzewski started coaching in 2006, 14 years after the original Dream Team, that the national basketball team became something to treat seriously. In other words, it's a process and it takes time. Things that can be improved is for international baseball to be taken more seriously, I think they need to have more international competition than just the WBC once every 4 years. I think baseball is more like cricket and rugby and you need tours. Imagine a 7-game series between the Dominican and U.S. Wouldn't that be a lot of fun and sell a lot of tickets? The problem with the WBC and it'll never go away is the one-off game result is random. That's part of the event's beauty, but imagine a best-of-seven between some of these teams and how more enthralling it'd be. Plus, you'd make playing for Team USA more regular and then you have a real team as opposed to a collection of players. Congratulations to the Dominican Republic on winning the 2013 World Baseball Classic.
Americans take the olympics to another level. If you made the Olympics available to MLB players then it would have a legitimacy that the WBC doesn't have in the American public eye just because it's the olympics. Frankly that is about the dumbest thing I can think of, but it's true. The basketball world cup isn't particularly popular, but Olympic basketball is. It is kind of dumb, but the way it is.
Baseball America wrapup the event in a podcast. They touch on pretty much everything. http://media.baseballamerica.com/mp3/free/130320.mp3
Let's not confuse apples with oranges, please. If you want the WBC to start being taken seriously, get rid of the children's rules... Rules of Order Dictate Pitching at World Classic - N.Y. Times That's the kind of thing they do in the Little Leagues, gentlemen. Not in a major world championship tournament. Treat these guys like men or don't waste our time.
I generally agree with the pitching rules. It is however clubs like the Yankees that are pushing the rules on the WBC. Hoping the WBC goes broke is pretty hilarious since it's MLB and the PA that manage the thing.
When it comes to the pitching rules, I do try to hold my breath. I know, without a doubt in my mind, that these rules exist solely to protect MLB owners' investments in players' arms. They don't want to lose their ace or their closer because of this tournament. Any statements of "safety" ring as true Roger "Let's Make the Game Safer by Playing Two Extra Games" Goodell. I also try to delude myself. In cricket, there are two basic forms of the game, multi-day cricket and one day cricket. In cricket matches player over several games (the real form of cricket to me), teams can use as many or as few bowlers (pitchers) as they want. Usually teams need at least five good bowlers and one or two guys who can bowl and score runs to get through a match. When one day cricket came around, rules were created to mandate that teams use at least five bowlers. The rational behind it was to make the one day matches seem more like regular cricket and prevent a team with one dominant bowler from winning the match on his arm alone. Essentially I try to pretend that pitching limits in the WBC are designed to account for that fact that in most baseball competitions, you cannot ride one good pitcher to the finish line and many people (myself) included think that competitions where you can do that are crapshoots. Fortunately for me, most of the games either started way too early or way too late for me to have to think clearly while watching them are realizing how much of a load of BS I was trying to sell myself.
The worst part about it was MLB Network trying to explain the pitch count rules. "It's like Little League...." That's an F minus for marketing right there.