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Tuesday, March 24, 2009

The World Baseball Classic Is Finally Over

Now that the World Baseball Classic has ended in dramatic fashion, fans of Major League Baseball can finally get their players back and get back to some form of normality. This Phillies had rented out a couple of players to the international set of teams, and some of these guys were pretty important to their big league club. Jimmy Rollins, Shane Victorino, Carlos Ruiz, J.C. Romero, Matt Stairs, not to mention about a half dozen or so minor leaguers were playing for their respective countries.



I am not going to get into whether or not I think they should play for their country. But I will discuss what the MLB team should do to protect themselves from a disaster should one of the league’s stars blow out a knee or an elbow. In future contracts, place a proviso where the team is not on the hook for the player’s salary for injuries incurred during exhibition play. This will include the World Baseball Classic, and if the Olympic Committee puts baseball back on the list of games, that too. This will of course, force the players to carefully consider their participation.

Now luckily, no one was seriously injured and those who felt tweaks or strains, pulled out when they could. It would be difficult to imagine the uproar if J.Roll would have pulled up lame. How could the Phillies be compensated for losing their star shortstop? They couldn’t. Instead they would have to deal with it when every other team in their division is at full strength.

Injuries can happen at any time and that has been an area of concern for the other professional sports too, so it is time for baseball to follow their leads and give the ability to the teams to disallow players from participation. Otherwise clubs could be looking at a situation where some guy from the Netherlands or China ruins a teams chance from winning a championship.

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