Wed, Mar 22, 2006 page19

• Selig has high hopes for Classic

  INTERNATIONAL BASEBALL Despite complaints from managers and owners in Major League Baseball about interference in their preseason training programs, the World Baseball Classic was a major success for the game

  • By William Rhoden / NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE
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  Now Bud Selig really has his hands full.

  Selig, the baseball commissioner, who is already up to his neck in the Barry Bonds steroids controversy, faces a potentially far-reaching problem of his own making.

  Selig was one of the architects of the World Baseball Classic. He pushed for an international tournament that would bring together the world's best teams.

  Mission accomplished.

  The past two weeks have been a demonstration of outstanding competition and colorful crowds, with organized cheering and spontaneous dancing.

  Last week, a hastily assembled, poorly conditioned team of US stars was embarrassed and finally eliminated from the tournament. Monday night, Japan defeated favored Cuba 10-6 to win the inaugural championship. The teams had only two major league players between them, both Japanese.

  This has been a legitimate global series, and that's Selig's problem. The tournament was immediately so successful that Major League Baseball must re-examine its place in international baseball. Specifically, it must rename its fall classic. The season-ending event played in the US each fall is dramatic and exciting, but it is not the World Series.

  "The World Series is still, whether we have a different name for it, the World Series," Selig said during the sixth inning of Monday night's game. "However, having said that, as the World Classic gets bigger as the internationalization of the sport develops even more, that's an interesting dilemma, but it's a dilemma I'll be glad to face."

  Many of us have spent our childhoods and adult lives indulging the fantasy of the World Series. We played along because the US had the world's greatest ballplayers and the best baseball teams. Major League Baseball was the sun and the moon.

  Now it's merely the sun.

  On Sunday night, I attended a screening of the documentary "La Republica de Beisbol: Los Gigantes Dominicanos" (translated as "The Republic of Baseball: The Dominican Giants of the American Game"). It traces the hard road that the first wave of Dominican players had in reaching the major leagues. Several of the pioneering Dominican players were in the audience.

  After the film, when someone asked what the players thought about the World Baseball Classic, the former major leaguer Jesus Alou said: "I believe that finally, baseball made a breakthrough. All through my career -- and I played in two World Series -- I kept telling myself, This is not the World Series."

  I asked Alou what he thought happened to the United States and whether there was a lesson to be learned. "There's no lesson," he said. "The players got caught off guard. They were not prepared for the greatness of the event. Next time, they will be."

  The World Baseball Classic may have had another unanticipated effect. The public perception of certain major league players who chose not to represent their countries was damaged.

  During a news conference Sunday, I asked Sadaharu Oh, the legendary Japanese player who now manages Japan's team, whether Hideki Matsui's decision to stay with the Yankees for spring training would affect his popularity in Japan.

  "For the Japanese fans," Oh said through an interpreter, "they might have that kind of opinion, that Matsui should have been in this tournament playing for the Japanese team."

  Oh added that a strong performance by Matsui this season could offset any bad feelings fans might have."Matsui hasn't played a real game yet this year, so I'm sure he will have a lot of opportunities to win back his popularity back in Japan," he said.

  Ichiro Suzuki of the Seattle Mariners, on the other hand, has gained by playing. He raised his stature even more during the title game, when he drove in the first of Japan's four runs in the ninth inning.

  "There was a wrong impression of Ichiro that he was sort of selfish," Oh said. "But as the people can see, he really committed himself to this team and he put so much time into this. Now he's one of the leaders of the team as well. I'm sure his popularity went up once again in Japan."

  Later Sunday, I asked Alou and the former major league catcher Ozzie Virgil about Dominican players like Alex Rodriguez and Pedro Martinez, who chose not to play under the Dominican flag. (Rodriguez played for the US, where he was born; his parents are Dominican.)

  "It's sad that some of our player making all the money have so many complaints," Virgil said, adding: "I felt their presence in the game -- without even playing. They could have given the Dominican players a boost."

  Alou said he could detect a slight change in attitude among Dominicans. "You can compare these guys to soldiers of their countries," he said. "When they go out there to battle, they want their best soldiers to go. At least for the Dominican Republic, we didn't have that."

  But the major adjustment has to come from Major League Baseball. There must be a change in how we refer to the October ritual when the best teams from the American League and the National League play a best-of-seven series.

  Call it the Fall Classic, call it the MLB Championship. Just don't call it the World Series anymore.
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