MLB Showdown Obsession

 If there is one consistent source of controversy for the World Baseball Classic from year to year, it is without a doubt their attempts at finding a satisfying tiebreaker procedure. It seems every time a country gets eliminated because of some confusing math. For 2013, if there was a 3 way tie, the math remained crazy: Team's Quality Balance or TQB. First you take total runs scored divided by total inning batted. Then you take runs against and divide that by innings pitched. Then take the first number and subtract the next number and you have your TQB. It looks like this: (RS / IB) - (RA / IP) = TQB So you take the numbers of each team against the other teams they're tied with and determine the ranking for the tie breaker. Still confused? So was everyone in the WBC. There is an easy way to help teams understand what they have to do to avoid losing the tie breaker: Win big, avoid blowout losses, never stop scoring. With that understanding, you see a breakaway from typical games...

 There are some moments in sports history are just so surreal that you just have to sit back and admire the absurdity of it all. One such moment was when Canada and Mexico, while playing in the United States, got into a major benches clearing brawl towards the end of their 1st round matchup. But I get ahead of myself... Mexico entered pool play with the expectation that they would advance to the next round like they did in '06 and '09. That expectation took a major hit when they lost 6-5 to Italy. They recovered with a 5-2 win over the United States. With a 1-1 record, they entered the game against Canada needing a victory to have a chance to advance. Italy already had 2 wins and it was very likely that the US could beat both Canada and Italy. Just one win wouldn't cut it. Canada took a 4-0 lead in the 1st inning, and while Mexico cut it to a 4-3 game, the Canadian offense pulled away in the late innings to make it a 9-3 game in the 9th. While the game was by no means over,...

Third time's the charm for the World Baseball Classic. The 2013 version offered even more tweaks to the format, but no change more noticeable than the lineup. As opposed to in 2006, the 2009 WBC involved the pitfall where teams that went winless in round 1 not only were eliminated, but they'd have to requalify to participate in 2013 as the Classic was finally ready to expand the number of countries beyond the original 16. Twelve countries from across the world were invited. The qualifiers took place in 2012 with the teams divided into four double-elimination brackets comprised of three new teams and one of the last place teams from 2009. From that chaos, two new teams emerged to play with the big dogs in the proper competition, while Panama and South Africa were gone (South Africa has yet to qualify ever since). As with the previous years, a number of MLB players from the upcoming 2013 season participated in the competition wearing the colors of their home countries. 11 of the ...

 Good seasons are very common, and happen all the time for multiple players on just about every team...Great seasons are a bit more uncommon but it's not shocking to see entire all star teams comprised of guys having such types of seasons...Once-in-a-lifetime are as the name implies and the chances are rare that you get even one of those guys a season. So imagine the odds when two of those types of seasons happened in the same year. Ted Williams of the Boston Red Sox was putting together a .400 BA season, to date the last time it has ever happened in baseball, meanwhile in the Bronx, Joe DiMaggio found a way to outshine him by putting together a record breaking hitting streak of 56 games. Each man would be far and away the obvious choice for MVP, but only one of them was getting the award in 1941. Not that either man was lacking in such recognition in their career (Williams would win 2 MVPs in his career, DiMaggio would win 3) but to take home the hardware in '41 would be the u...