What a wonderful Olympic baseball final. Good pitching, fielding, 2 home runs and a one run victory. An absolute thrilling bottom of the nineth. Korean starting pitcher, who had done so well,gave up a hit, sacrifice bunt, and two base on balls. Catcher gets thrown out of the game for disputing the umpires strike calls at this point. Relief pitcher comes in and gets the hitter to hit into a double play.
Korea deserved it as they led all the way but Cuba could have won it. A great result for baseball, as Cuba did so well in the baseball Classic (beaten finalists) which is for the top professionals.
Show me another team tournament and final that was better, certainly not football, basketball, hockey or handball.
Role on the Classic and hopefully the realisation by MLB that they have to participate in these two tournaments if they want baseball to rival football in, number of countries playing the game and the improvement in standard of play across the continents. Role on a European league and remember that Korea( won four one-run games in the Olympics) qualified with Canada (lost five one-run games in the Olympics)in the tournament that Great Britain were prevented from playing in because UKSPORT would not provide the funding to go to Taiwan (Teipei).
Once again thanks to the BBC for showing the game, it may be just the boost that baseball needs in these islands.
What about holding the Classic in the Southern Hemishere(Australia has cricket stadiums that could be converted for the tournament) or Mexico, in the American,Japanese,Korea off-season? What about a combination of Florida,California,Puerto Rico,Dominican Republic and Panama in February and March and the covered stadiums in Japan and Korea ,where the weather is still cold at this time of the year, i.e. before the professional leagues get into action?