classic

i am in toronto to watch a bunch of baseball because it is spring break and there is the second world baseball classic which had cheap tickets. toronto, as everyone probably knows, is an awful lot like america but it is much nicer in some ways. the world baseball classic is major league baseball's attempt to grow global interest in the game and hold an international tournament similar to the world cup. this is the beginning of the competition, where teams are playing in pools of four. the countries in the pool here in toronto are the us, canada, venezuela, and italy. two teams emerge from each group, and the us and venezuela were heavily favored in this one. oh wait, i'm in canada, they were favoured. anyway, the games today were us/canada and venezuela/italy, in that order.
the us/canada game was of course viewed as a huge deal. there are a decent number of talented canadian players, but as the competition is somewhat fledgling, it doesn't draw all the marquee names that any of the teams involved might boast, including the states. last time around, the canadians did beat the us, adding some steam to a game that was already pretty significant in toronto. the games were at the rogers center, which is enormous. the size of the venue is breathtaking from the outside, as it has a retractable dome that adds more height to an already generously sized arena (it ordinarily houses the baseball team and the argonauts, the canadian football league team - canadian football needs a very large field, bigger than american). so this large stadium was totally packed out, and mostly with canada fans, but there were a lot of americans too. the interesting thing was that despite the tense atmosphere and the obvious passion of the fans, there was little to no jawing between opposing supporters. the game itself was absolutely amazing and extremely competitive. there were a lot of home runs. in fact, i think it was the only way the us scored at all. maybe not quite. it was not much different from the way the tigers play, speaking of which, there were a lot of detroit fans there, not too surprising given proximity and the glut of representatives on the venezuelan roster. at the end of the game, the canadians were behind by one with a runner on second and a great player batting. the count worked to full, followed by a couple of foul balls. needless to say, this was pretty tense. the ball was hit hard into play, and with the dowmed roof it was difficult to gauge how far it might go, but it dropped into middle right field and was caught to end the game. good times.
the venezuela/italy game was much different. whereas the the us/canada match was expected to be competitive if not as close as it was, everyone was quite certain venezuela would crush and perhaps mercy the italians. also, toronto is not in or near either of those two countries. however, there were a lot of venezuelans in for the game, which was great to see. their fans brought a great atmosphere, sort of the world cup feel i am sure baseball would like to achieve: lots of country colors, face paint, silly hats, various percussion instruments, good chanting. if you make it from venezuela to canada, you are probably pretty serious about this stuff. as for italy, well, not the same sort of presence, but a respectable amount of canadians of italian heritage showing support, bringing some flags and such. the italians batted first, and things started out as expected. before the third out, though, the italians got a couple hits but didn't push anything across. good enough for the venezuelans as they set in to their strength, hitting. the second batter cranked a ball to the gap in deep right, and my thought was well, here we go. the right fielder, however, had different ideas, and hustled his best, but it didn't look like he would get it. he made a great dive and made a shocking catch, quieting the vociferous venezuela supporters. it was totally a game-changer, as for the next few innings the italians looked a lot better than the venezuelans. despite much threatening, however, no runs were scored. eventually, things shook down more or less as expected and venezuela won like 7-0 or something, but that it happened is not as important as how it happened.
the story of the significance begins a couple years ago, with the aforementioned detroit tigers. the tigers, while showing some great stretches over the last couple years, have had little luck with their relief pitching. one of the lowlights of the tiger bullpen recently was a man by the name of jason grilli. although he was born in america, the world baseball classic rules allow him to play for italy because his parents or grandparents moved to the states from there. although there have been several terrible tiger relievers over the last couple years, and probably a couple are in this tournament, jason grilli was markedly one of the worst, and has become somewhat of a representative joke between myself and my buddy from law school who went to grand valley. he also has a disdain for italians based on his experiences in rome and greater italy this past summer, and so on the way up here i was making jokes about getting him a game-worn jason grilli jersey. before then, it was always an autographed one or something along those lines. point is, we hate jason grilli, have hated him for a while, and have had several conversations about how terrible of a pitcher he is. the tigers did trade him away last season, and jim leyland was forced into talking about why, and talked some great smack on grilli. basically, this is one of our favorite dudes to dog. he showed up in a bunch of promos because he is one person on their roster who has flawless english, and we boo him every time they show him on the screen, and we booed him when they announced him on the roster, and so on. so the game is headed into the fifth or six, the italian starter has held the powerhouse venezuelans scoreless, and we see grilli is warming up in the bullpen, and sure enough, they bring him in. we boo him when he is announced. he warms up a little and the inning begins; the first batter is carlos guillen, former contemporary of jason grilli in detroit, but unlike jason grilli, a player worth having around, good hitter, some good skills in the field, not a superstar power hitter, but a solid daily guy. grilli delivers, and it is high and outside, not a close pitch, not a good pitch. grilli throws again, and guillen sees it well and gets all of it, sending it well over the left field wall. two pitches, and grilli gives up a home run to a guy who rarely hits them, and things begin to unravel from there. grilli gets a little help from his defense on the next ball in play, and then serves up back to back walks. despite being one of the few major leaguers on the roster, grilli has quickly run to the end of his manager's patience, and gets yanked. venezuela scores three more times, and the batters grilli walked are charged to him and he gets the loss on the night. grilli finishes with a era of 81. if you don't know what that means, it means he is fucking awful and was completely useless. in a bizarre way, it totally made my night. i'm having a great time, and i don't expect that to stop tomorrow with the highly anticipated us/venezuela tilt.