Everything you need to know about March Madness

Duke will always suck.

Why the WBC is nothing more than a dog and pony show

The World Baseball Classic's second round is underway and, for the most part, I have enjoyed it. Since baseball has no Olympic-level competition, it's great to see national teams with all sorts of crazy players I've never heard of going at it and amped-up fans singing songs. It's much more interesting than regular Spring Training for sure.

But as far as the level of competition goes, the WBC is kind of a joke.

By now, everyone knows the story of the start-up Netherlands knocking out the star-studded Dominicans. And yeah, it was a cool story (but please spare me with "the biggest upset in sports ever!!!" talk), but highlighted the problem with the WBC -- the insanity of a double elimination, March Madness-esque tournament for baseball.

In any other Olympic or national-level competition, there are qualifying rounds. This eliminates (or cuts down on) the chance that some random, shitty team will make it to the big stage and upend a team that, let's be honest, is better.

The truth is, there really aren't that many quality baseball players on about half the WBC teams. They are little more (sometimes, less) than AAA or even AA teams. Take a look at the Netherlands team stats through five games:

25 hits/29 total bases/55 strikeouts/.202 OBP/.182 SLG/.157 BA/.385 OPS/7 RS:13 RA

In a word: barrrrrrrrrf.

"Now wait," you say, "Their pitching must be dirty." And you'd be right:

2.66 ERA/36 hits/33 walks: 27 strikeouts/1.57 WHIP

Just kidding, they're not very good.

If there were qualifying rounds, there is no way the Netherlands would have made it in. And we could still be watching the MLB-studly D.R. team, instead of the no-name, bound to lose N.D. team.

The beauty of March Madness is, that for all the upsets, the best teams usually last. With the WBC's three-round, double-elimination clusterfuck, there is a very good chance the best teams won't even make it beyond the first round, especially considering the time of year.

So I will keep watching and rooting for Cuba (team 1.296 OPS), Puerto Rico (4-0, 32 K:8 BB for the staff) and all the other talented teams to win. Because seriously, name one (other than Ponson) player on the Netherlands.

March Madness 2009

Besides the World Cup (and admittedly, most other soccer tournaments), March Madness is easily my favorite sports playoff system. Almost every game is off the wall intense, and of the 63 games, it seems like at least a quarter of them come down to the final minute. The inclusion of at least one team from each conference in D-1 is, in my opinion, awesome, because every year there is a great cinderella story. Besides, if I went to school at, oh I don't know, Cornell, it would amp me up to no end to know that my school was going to be playing in March Madness (and getting absolutely demolished by some basketball power house). Now that ESPN realizes the interest that people now have in cinderella stories, they've started broadcasting a ton of games from the smaller conference tournaments (which have the same intensity, in most cases, as March Madness itself). I don't believe they did this (at least as much) in years past, but it is a rad and smart move. Essentially, they are extending March Madness (which, lets face it, pretty much everyone digs) farther backwards, and additionally getting people more interested in the early round games that can be blowouts by familiarizing people with teams like Siena and VCU, that actually can upset a top team in the tournament.

Additionally, I love spending half the day at work constantly refreshing the Live Scores page on ESPN to stay up to date with all the games. I don't know why they don't just give us the days off.

What that Smell Like?

What I'm into at the moment:

MUSIC

Arthur Russell - "Love is Overtaking Me": This album was compiled from a bunch of Russell's unreleased songs, and, while it doesn't have the cohesion of a usual album, the grand majority of the 20 plus songs are lo-fi, mainly acoustic gems.

Neil Young - "Comes a Time": Certainly not his most well-known or groundbreaking album, this one has captivated me recently with its amazing (per usual) lyrics and laid-back, glorious melodies. Vintage Neil Young.

MOVIES

Milk - I just saw this over the weekend and both my girlfriend and I loved it. I wasn't aware of the real-life events about which the movie was made, so that certainly made it a bit more interesting. Sean Penn was certainly great, and although I think I enjoyed Slumdog's visual style more (Milk seemed to me very run-of-the-mill cinematographically), all in all I think they are about even for my movie of the year vote.

BOOKS

Kurt Vonnegut - "Slaughterhouse Five": Vonnegut totally rules. My favorite thing about this book is how it is essentially a science fiction book but is also amazingly elegant and poignant.

SPORTS

Just watched Pitt beat UConn, which got me pretty amped for March Madness. Bring it on baby.