Attention Travelers to Asia
Jeff · January 12, 2006 at 9:23 am · Filed Under Mariners
As Ichiro gets focused to play in the World Baseball Classic, those of us who occasionally fly east might turn our thoughts to scheduling.
If you’re going to Japan anyway at some point next year, let’s say, why wouldn’t you plan on being there March 3-5? That’s when Ichiro and his Japanese squad play in the first round of the tournament. South Korea, China and Taiwan will also play games in the other T-dome, the one not in Tacoma.
The story I link, from the Mainichi Shimbun, is pretty standard fluff about how Ichiro is excited to play in the classic, will aim to win, and then will prepare for the regular season. But the thought of watching the inaugural WBC in Tokyo is pretty exciting.
Japan and Chinese Taipei both feature some nice teams, so it should be a joy to watch. And Japan’s still pretty deep in talent even without Matsui or Iguchi.
…because I’m already planning to go to Japan for three weeks in July or August and see a home game of all 12 teams, or at least the ones I haven’t been to yet.
I figured if I went to any WBC stuff at all, it’d be the second round in Anaheim. There’s no way the Japanese team won’t make it past the first round (no, really — you should have seen the Konami Cup, where the Chiba Marines were so much better than the other teams that they even had to invoke the mercy rule when they were up 12-1 in the seventh inning of their game against the CPBL champion Sinon Bulls). Whether or not they’ll make it past the second round of the WBC is another story…
and is it wrong to hope they don’t get out of round 1 so that Ichiro! gets to go back to his regular routine in Peoria? Here is the round 1 in Phoenix schedule.
I for one am not hoping that Japan gets knocked out in the first round. I’m hoping that they’ll play the US in the semifinals or finals in San Diego on March 18 or 20 — it’d be great to see all the stars of Japanese baseball play the US. And while I’d love to go to Japan to see them, it’s so much easier to go to San Diego…
So how long does this thing last anyway? Am I going to be watching the Rainiers or the Mariners at spring training in late March? Geez.
prob. be like most spring training games– you see a few folks from the hometime 9 for an inning ot two, and then the other guys take over 🙂
The final’s on March 20th, in San Diego. how many M’s are on the various rosters, anyway? As MSB says, it probably won’t impact your spring training experience too much.
Ichiro! for Japan, Beltre for the DR and Pineiro for PR, IIRC
So yeah, with only those three taking part you won’t even miss ’em if you go to Peoria – front line guys only play two or three innings at most anyway…