Monday, March 09, 2009

You Down With WBC? Yeah, You Know Me

The USA's dominating 15-6 victory over Venezuela made for some compelling theatre until the sixth inning of course, when a close game turned into a rout as the US scored eight runs in the inning. With that, the US advances to the second round, though they will play what is virtually an exhibition match against Venezuela on Wednesday at 3.30p PT.

I enjoyed watching the coverage, if for nothing more than the fact that it's baseball--maybe semi-real, true, but still more real and with higher stakes than spring training ball. Tom Verducci has a nice post on SI.com that should get you up to speed if you didn't tune in this weekend. But given the alternatives (wow, man chasing tire makes NASCAR headlines, yawn), the WBC was pretty fun to watch. I'd recommend it.

As for the mlb.com link (the first one in this post), it's worth a gander if only for the comment stream on the USA/Venezuela article, which includes some highly intellectual debate worthy of The Economist (reorganized chronologically by me):

commenter wrote:
Take THAT, Chavez! (3/9/2009 10:35:39 AM)

Cesar21 wrote:
"commenter wrote: Take THAT, Chavez! 3/9/2009 10:35:39 AM"... I saw no Chavez in the field, and he has nothing to do with the team so don't show the world how much of an idiot you really are with comments as stupid an irrelevant as that. Good job on Team USA, but their pitching needs to do better if they want to beat Cuba, Korea, Japan, DR, and PR. (3/9/2009 12:33:43 PM)

LisaPhilsFaninNJ wrote:
Cesar21: Actually, Endy Chavez does play for Team Venezuela. His name is posted on the team's roster. (3/9/2009 12:53:08 PM)

Cesar21 wrote:
In that case I stand corrected :), but yeah is safe to say that isn't the Chavez the commenter was refering too. (3/9/2009 1:10:14 PM)

commenter wrote:
YOU ARE ALL A BUNCH OF IDIOTS! THE GUY WAS TALKING ABOUT HUGO CHAVEZ, THE PRESIDENT OF VENEZUELA NOT A PLAYER! CHAVEZ HAS BEEN GIVING THE U.S. GRIEF FOR SOME TIME NOW KICKING AMERICAN OIL COMPANIES OUT, TAKING OVER ALREADY DEVELOPED REFINERIES, AND BADMOUTHING OUR COUNTRY! (3/9/2009 1:13:04 PM)

Are you sure he didn't mean Maricela Chavez, retired female racewalker?

3 comments:

Eric Karros said...

I had no idea Endy Chavez was such a controversial figure. I assume it's because his first name is so unusual?

Steve Sax said...

Hey, the Endy justifies the means.

Eric Karros said...

Sax, that was just plain bad.

When it comes to bad puns, Hugo where others fear to tread.