The Olympic Games don't want any part of baseball right now. And the World Cup and the Intercontinental Cup, as nice as those international tournaments might be, aren't exactly a font of the top baseball talent in the world.
So if you happen to be searching for a competition to determine the best baseball-playing nation in the world, with the best in the world playing in it, the World Baseball Classic, even in its first flawed incarnation, is about as good as we can do right now. And after Monday night's championship game, Japan certainly will take it.
Beaten twice by the Koreans, ripped off once by the Americans and given a back-door ticket into the semifinals by the Mexicans, Japan won the first WBC title by swarming over finally overmatched Cuba 10-6. The game won't go down as the greatest exhibition of baseball in the history of the sport, by any stretch. In a lot of ways, Monday's uneven final lacked the passion that has made this tournament such a somewhat-surprising success.
But the Japanese were, without a doubt, the class of the last few days. And for millions of their baseball-crazed fans -- and for the rest of us, too, given the lack of alternatives -- they are the best baseball-playing nation on the planet.
After two close losses to the Koreans and a controversial 4-3 loss to the U.S. in earlier rounds of this three-week tournament, Japan almost didn't make it to the final two games in San Diego. But when Mexico knocked the U.S. out of the tournament last week, Japan snuck in. On Saturday, the Japanese avenged their earlier losses to Korea with a 6-0 wipeout, and on Monday they jumped on Cuba with a four-run first inning.
The Cubans made it close, narrowing the gap to 6-5 with a two-run eighth. But a four-run ninth inning -- capped by a two-run single by pinch-hitter Kosuke Fukudome -- sealed the win and a place in international baseball history for Japan.
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