At the beginning of March, I was a bit anxious for baseball season to get started, so I watched some of the World Baseball Classic. After all, it launched the major league career of Daisuke Matsuzaka in 2006. The popular Blog Legendz Sports had a good baseball review about this. http://sports.legendz.com/2009/03/344/

Since baseball originated in the United States, I expected them to be the dominant team. While they were a good team, they were not dominant In one match against Puerto Rico, the game was stopped short due to the ?mercy? rule, and it was the US team that needed the mercy. Japan was the dominant team throughout the classic, and some other teams offered a few surprises as well. In this short article I will give the top three teams a ?baseball review rating? based on how interesting I found them.

Team USA- Writing a baseball review of this team is a bit difficult. With this all star cast, I thought they would run away with it this year. The problem with having too many all stars on one team is that any game they play in has the potential to turn into a beauty pageant. Instead of worrying about winning, players worry about looking better than the guy sitting next to them in the dugout. While third place is okay, with the level of talent on this team they should dominated the classic. Baseball Review Rating - U for under-achiever.

Team Japan- They won the classic for the second time in a row, and exhibited pure baseball excellence, losing only twice in the whole series. Baseball Review Rating - E for excellence.

Team Korea- They were a fun team to watch. I didn't expect an Asian team outside of Japan to finish second. Good pitching with plenty of hitting power gives them a Baseball Review Rating of S for Surprise.