Pride

Kind of a nice follow-up to the ego post, but I'd like to take this into a different direction. Every three years there is the World Baseball Classic. It's terrible because it forces guys to hurry their workouts to get back into game ready shape, but it's a great tournament, where the best players represent their country.

For some reason, I feel like foreign players care much more about their own country than the U.S. players do. I mean, don't get me wrong - the players on the U.S. roster are playing hard and to win, but it's the players opting not to play that grind my gears.

I don't think you'll ever see Daisuke Matsuzaka or Ichiro declining a roster spot. But, in the past two tournaments, you had plenty of American aces decline spots. I can't blame them, but I think the U.S. is being misrepresented. I don't want to get into names and stats, but wouldn't it be nice if you had Lincecum, Greinke and Halladay all ready to go. I know these pitchers weren't the same back then, but even then, you had players decline spots. Back when Josh Hamilton was hitting bombs left and right, he declined.

I can't think of many hitters that don't play for U.S., but I'm sure there are. Other countries get 99% of their best players, I think U.S. gets about 80-85. And when you are talking about the best players to walk on this Earth, it's a big deal.

I understand why they don't want to play, and it makes sense. Forget about hurting your ML team in terms of performance, but you are risking injury. You hurry your workouts and now your pitch count and innings count for the year goes up. Being that baseball is a 6 month season, there is no good time to have it. Maybe I'm too patriotic, but I want to see America rip it up in '12. Maybe by then Bryce Harper will bat third and Stephen Strasburg will be on the hill.