Just watched Japan thrash China 18-2 in the World Baseball Classic. I was thinking “isn’t there a mercy rule?” Apparently, there is, but Japan wasn’t leading by 10 after seven innings (it was 11-2 at the top of the 8th), so the mercy rule only kicked in after the 8th inning.
My thinking on the World Baseball Classic is that, despite all the pullouts, it’s a great first step: yes, it’s not the full all-out competition that other World Cups are, but then if you ever read any account of the first football (okay, okay, since most of the readers here are American I’ll say soccer) World Cup, the 1930 tournament in Uruguay wasn’t that well-represented either: the traditional European powers couldn’t be arsed to make the trip across the Atlantic, there were disputes over silly things such as who would provide the ball for the final (they ended up playing with a ball from Uruguay for one half, and one from Argentina in the second) - and yet, come 2006, this is the best-watched sporting event in the world bar none. So I think, or at least hope, it will be with the WBC: players are going to kick themselves for not having taken part in the first one. Or at least - the non-American ones will. (Alan Schwarz has a good preview of what to look out for.)
Against that hope is the sense that sports that were invented in America tend not to have as heated world tournaments - the soccer, rugby, and cricket World Cups all seem much more passionate spectacles than the basketball world championships…