I can’t decide whether it was a good or bad thing for the WBC and ESPN that the US got knocked out of the tournament early. On one hand, Americans might be so pissed off that we weren’t in the finals of our national pastime that we will pay more attention to it next time and demand our good players actually go. On the other hand, it probably just means no one really saw the finals and the WBC was the big failure we thought it’d be.
Nonetheless, there are plenty of people outside the US that watched Japan beat Cuba in the finals. The Japanese fans are all pretty excited about winning the inaugural World Baseball Classic. (I think. All the blog entries say WBC! but after that I’m not sure because I can’t read Japanese.) The final score was Japan 10, Cuba 6, Washington Nationals -1. Sadly, Cuba couldn’t even keep the extra cut of tournament profits by making it to the finals because they agreed that Castro’s government would not profit from the tournament and to donate their portion to charity. At least they got to keep their free iPod Nanos.
[MSNBC]: Japan beats Cuba for WBC championship
[Miami Herald]: Cuba’s cut to be donated
