ELECTRICITY IS IN THE AIR, AT WBC 2023!!! The level of excitement for these games is the equivalent to the championship series. This is the first time I have actually paid attention to the tournament and watched games start to finish, and I’m really blown away.

Fan engagement at these games is absolutely incredible, and we’re only in the group stage! This morning I woke up and caught the Chinese Taipei – Netherlands game. The crowd was off the wall! Blowing horns, whistling, banging thundersticks, singing and chanting, literally never sitting down in their seats. When Yu Chang hit that grand slam in the 2nd Inning it genuinely reminded me of a college football Saturday night in the SEC watching the crowd in Death Valley or Tuscaloosa erupt after a 4th quarter touchdown. You can truly feel the magnitude of the tournament in each inning of each game hearing the crowd get louder and louder as the game goes on. My immediate assumption was that this was only something you saw in the games played in Asia, however I realized how incorrect that assumption was once I tuned into the Columbia-Mexico game played at Chase Field in Arizona. Same energy, same emotion, same decibel levels as Gustavo Campero ran across home plate to score in the top of 10th inning with the go ahead run in that game.

It’s honestly a lot of fun watching these games, seeing the competitiveness among the players for a tournament that has nothing to do with their major league careers and contracts. Guys that play on the same professional teams, lining up against each other in international play, it’s definitely an odd sight to say the least. Just imagine what it will look like seeing Shohei Ohtani pitch to Mike Trout if Japan and USA play each other at some point in this tournament. Two guys that wear the same uniform from March-September, hitting after the other in the lineup, now facing off against each other. We’re almost out of the group stage now, and as it stands tonight March 11th, and 7:08 PM, the only team to advance to the next round so far is Japan. USA plays Great Britain in roughly two hours. Personally I would love to see the United States win this tournament, but what I want most of all in this, is for everyone to come out healthy and jump right back into Spring Training without missing a beat. The last thing we want is anyone getting hurt and MLB front offices and managers crying to disband this global event. Let’s hope these WBC managers are smart and they manage the workloads properly. Best of luck to everyone participating, and lets go USA baseball!!