I can’t believe that I missed it. Early this morning was the first game of the 2009 World Baseball Classic. Now I know I’m not a baseball guy but I can’t help but ask why the hell there needs to be a baseball world championship.

Now that the Olympics have booted baseball for the foreseeable future, a world championship makes a little more sense. It showcases the top talent in one massive tournament for baseball supremacy. When MLB interim commissioner for life Bud Selig proposed the concept, the Olympics welcomed baseball (temporarily) even if it was just a bunch of low level minor leaguers and college players. A number of reasons have been speculated why baseball was booted out of the Olympics: Lack of competition, MLB not releasing its top players, lack of fan support and baseball’s massive steroid problems.

But the thing that really kills this tournament is the general apathy towards it. Quite a few players are going to skip the WBC because of injury or pregnant wives, some claims less legitimate than others. Of course, there are others who just couldn’t care less about it. If I can compare it with other major world championships, athletes in hockey and soccer both try their damnedest to get on their national teams and play for their country as hard as they would for the Stanley Cup or League Championship. The fans don’t really seem to care about the WBC, especially in the host U.S. Meanwhile, Canada goes nuts for the World Cup of Hockey (and I would guess a few other countries as well) and the whole world in captivated by soccer’s World Cup. Finally, there is a lack of quality teams in the WBC. Maybe five of the 16 teams have a shot at the title. In hockey, six of eight teams are legitimate championship contenders. The World Cup of Soccer has more weak teams but I could have seen up to 10 of the 32 different teams walking away as champions.

Maybe I’m just being hard on the new kid in town but it seems as if this wasn’t a well thought out idea. After all, they invite any country that has a baseball diamond. It seems like commissioner Bud watched the World Cup of Soccer and said we can do something like that. And to top it off, Major League Baseball is running the show so there is no backing from a legitimate international sporting body like other world championships have.

And they use the designated hitter rule. Why do we even still have the DH rule?