Looking at how newspapers from around the world are covering baseball, thanks to the Newseum’s front pages page:
Subject: Canada-Mexico WBC Fight
Toronto Star: “A ball game to make Don Cherry proud”
Vanguardia (Saltillo): “Derrota y Trifulca” (roughly translated as “Defeat and Roughhouse” or “Loss and Roughhouse”)
Apologies for the very small post and the lack of any posts yesterday, I’ve been feeling a bit under the weather.
Okay, here’s the WBC news for today: Brett Lawrie hurt his ribcage, and Deolis Guerra also is out of the WBC.
Got that? Okay, good, now, time for a little bit of a preview for the USA-Mexico game tonight. It should be a treat, with reports coming that the game is close to a sell-out, with the crowd expected to be an even split between the USA and Mexico (a common occurrence in games featuring the Mexican national teams, to the extent where the American national soccer team plays many of it’s games against Mexico in northern cities like Columbus and Seattle to ensure it’s mainly an American crowd).
For Team USA, it’s an important game in order to get the WBC off to a good start. But for Mexico, this is an all-but-must-win game, after their shocking upset by Italy yesterday. And in the center of this is R.A. Dickey. He played for Team USA in the 1996 Olympics (and Brandon Phillips was the bat-boy!), but this is his first time in the WBC. So, how have Team Mexico’s hitters done in the past against Dickey:
Jorge Cantu: 3-8, 2B, BB, SO
Luis Cruz: 0-1
Ramiro Pena: 0-3
Gil Velazquez: 2-5, SO
…And that’s it. Those are the only players on Team Mexico that have met Dickey in MLB play. Knuckleballers are so hit and miss, of course, that there is no way of possibly knowing how the game could turn out, or how the other players could fare the first time they see the knuckler.
On the flip-side, here’s how the expected lineup for Team USA has done against Yovani Gallardo, the Mexican starter (this includes postseason play, by the way):
Jimmy Rollins: 2-10, SO
Brandon Phillips: 9-37, 3 2B, HR, 5 SO, 2 BB
Ryan Braun: None, since Braun and Gallardo both have played with the Brewers their entire careers
Joe Mauer: 5-10, 2 SO, 2 BB
David Wright: 3-16, HR, 8 SO, 3 BB
Eric Hosmer: None.
Giancarlo Stanton: 3-9, 2B, 3 SO
Adam Jones: None.
J.P. Arencibia: None.
So, there you have it: the histories between Team USA and Team Mexico’s hitters and today’s starting pitchers. Enjoy the games.
It is well known that I am a big fan of the Dutch word for baseball: Honkbal. In Dutch, apparently honk means home, purpose or goal, but thanks to the fact that it means something entirely different in English, it is, well, an inherently fun and an inherently funny word to us. And the style of play of the the Dutch National Team, who upset Cuba yesterday, is infectious, a team of athletic, smooth-fielding players who won’t let the fact they play for a country that isn’t among the traditional baseball powers stop them from showing that they belong.
And, by the looks of what was trending late last night, I’m not alone in having Honkbal fever:
Honkbal fever- catch it!
Here’s a picture from a playoff game between Parma and Nettuno in 2006:
This photo is under creative commons and was taken by “Lucam”.
With Pools C and D of the WBC’s first round starting, and Pool 1 of the second round (it is happening earlier so that there is less jet-lag later on) also beginning, here are the previews of those pools. Note that in some cases they (whether they are rosters that have had last-minute changes or information about a country) are out of date- for example, the preview of Venezuela mentions that Hugo Chavez is the country’s president, since I wrote it before he passed away.
Pool C Preview (Venezuela, Puerto Rico, Spain, Dominican Republic)
Pool D Preview (USA, Canada, Mexico, Italy)
Pool 1 Preview (Cuba, Japan, Taipei, Netherlands)
So, there you go.
The late-night results for the WBC-MLB exhibitions last night:
Team USA lost 8-7 to the Rockies… sort of. You see, all 8 of the Colorado runs came off of Rockies minor leaguers who filled up the last few innings of the game so that Team USA could save pitchers for the tournament.
Canada lost to the Reds 12-2.
Anyway, more WBC news later…
Not much news, other than Javy Guerra pulling out of the WBC (apparently a problem with his surgically repaired shoulder) and being replaced on Mexico by A’s farmhand Arnold Leon.
Here are the results of WBC-MLB Exhibitions, at least those complete by this point. I’ll have the late games tomorrow:
See you tomorrow…
The games in Taichung that featured the home team were all packed-house games, as this picture from the game against the Netherlands shows:
This photo, taken by “孤雲出岫 Free Cloud”, is under a creative commons license.
Go below the jump for the latest WBC News:
The Baseball Continuum 