World Baseball Classic warning
A warning to the organizers of the World Baseball Classic: if you allow Major League teams to prevent players from competing in the WBC, then the event will be doomed to failure. This comes about from a recent news story that the Tampa Bay Rays are preventing Scott Kazmir from pitching in the WBC. Kazmir wanted to pitch but the team won't let him, citing "concerns about his health and workload." While these are valid concerns, every single team could cite these same concerns about every single player. If this attitude is allowed to prevail, the WBC will turn into an Olympic style competition where minor leaguers play to determine the best national team in the world. The WBC's best hope for success is in drawing fan interest to see the top players in the world play for their home countries, not in seeing the second best players. If Scott Kazmir is one of those players, he should be allowed to pitch no matter what the Rays think.
This similar "club vs. country" debate exists more prominently in the soccer world, where teams generally frown upon their top players making trips half way across the world (mostly from Europe to South America) to compete in World Cup qualifying matches. But to the best of my knowledge, soccer teams do not have the right to prevent players from playing for their country, even if it means flying half way across the world or even missing games to compete in such competitions as the African Nations Cup. Clubs may not like it, but the fact remains that these competitions need to have their best players in them in order to be successful.
The WBC needs to take a tip from the soccer in that no matter what teams want, the attitude towards the players has to be to "let them play."
