WARNING: Contains Baseball-Related Content

So Japan won the inaugural World Baseball Classic, an oxymoron if ever there was one, knocking off Cuba 10-6 in a game that was far more exciting than the final score might indicate.

A couple of brief thoughts on the whole shebang, now that it's over. First, it was an awful lot of fun, especially for a Canadian fan, watching all of these teams play together for the first time and watching our glorious boys in red shock the world and the Americans in the first round. It was also cool, in a way, to watch teams playing at wildly different levels of skill, to get a sense of where other countries in the world were at in terms of baseball. The South Africans, looking for all the world like Cape Town High School's varsity squad in the group with the three North American teams, were particularly instructive. And to be clear about this, I don't mean this is a mean-spirited way-I can only imagine what a thrill it must have been for the South Africans to play on the same field as the superstars of the game, and then get destroyed by them (except, ahem, for Canada, who Cape Town High led going into the ninth. We simply aren't good enough at baseball to be on the losing end of inspiring underdog upsets, says I.)

It was also very cool to see how much the tournament meant to the fans and players for the various teams, particularly those from the Caribbean, Korea and Japan.It's a very good sign regarding the future of the tournament, and while I wish, as I've said before, that they'd mix up the pools a bit after the first round, I think the future of the WBC (or whatever they choose to call it) is safe for at least two more tournament cycles.

And finally, I think it's rather funny that in a tournament designed to show baseball fans what would happen if the world's best players suited up for their countries, as opposed to those totally bogus tournaments at the Olympics featuring no-names from the minor leagues, the two teams contesting the final were... two teams that between them have won seven of the twelve medals ever awarded at the Olympics. Plus ca change...