So here we are

It seems appropriate, though I guess it really isn’t, to visit how our teams will be grouped on the day of the World Cup draw. It just happened to come out that way. (And I wish I could see Charlize Theron better in this photo, but hey.)

We have 54 teams, so either we go with six groups of nine, or nine groups of six. I opted to go with more groups and fewer teams. As for the schedules, more about that later, but I think each team will play 30 games, and then be flung into the knockout stages (more World Cup talk). I’m leaning toward keeping 32 of the 54 teams for the tournament.

I wanted to keep the teams in groups that made as much sense as possible geographically. I didn’t want any far-flung NFL-style divisions if I could help it. But we have 10 international teams, and only six of them can be in the international division. So it wasn’t going to work completely.

I also wanted to keep as much competitive balance as possible. New York and Pennsylvania, for instance, are neighbors, but it makes no sense for them to be in the same group because they’re two of the best teams overall. Splitting them up made things complicated because we have so many eastern states. So some groups, I’m afraid, are stronger than others; that’s why I’m leaning toward keeping more teams in the bracket.

So we did the best we could. Here are the groups:

PACIFIC: Alaska/Hawaii, California, Japan, Oregon, Washington, Yellowstone
SOUTHWEST: Arizona, Colorado, Louisiana, Mexico, Mountain West, Texas
GREAT LAKES: Canada, Dakota, Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota, Wisconsin
CAPITOL: D.C., Europe, Michigan, Ohio, Virginia, West Virginia
SOUTH: Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, Tennessee
ATLANTIC: Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, South Carolina
NORTHEAST: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New York, Rhode Island, Twin States
CENTRAL: Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma
INTERNATIONAL: Cuba, Dominican Republic, NJAA, Panama Plus, Puerto Rico, Venezuela

Well, I can hear everyone (if anyone is actually reading this) saying, “There isn’t a Great Lake near the Dakotas, is there?” or “Those teams in the Capitol Division make no sense” or asking other questions I can’t even think of here. I plead guilty and I can’t really think of a better name than Great Lakes.

I wanted to work it out to put Dakota in the division with the Plains teams, because that looks like it doesn’t have any bad teams in it. But it might be more fun to follow as a result.

And, like with the World Cup draw, some groups are going to be tougher than others. The “Group of Death” here might be the Atlantic, although Delaware and South Carolina probably aren’t going to scare too many people.

Next, we’ll take a closer look at each group, starting with that Atlantic bunch.

Rising sun

Japan today, then the Dominican Republic, and “Play Ball” is just around the corner.

A few words about the cards and ratings that will allow us to play not only the big leaguers from Japan, but also the greats from the Japanese leagues who didn’t make it over here. Fred Bobberts, Len Durrant and others should take a bow (sorry). It’s fantastic to see players like Shigeo Nagashima and Masaichi Kaneda included in our project.

As such, this is going to be a deservedly strong team. If I had only the MLB guys to pick from, it would include a decent lineup, almost no bench, OK starting pitching and a strong bullpen. With the Japanese leagues’ players included, they’re strong almost all the way around except in the depth department. The lineup is much stronger than the backups.

Ichiro is one of my favorites and I could talk about him at length. He visited George Sisler’s grave when he was in St. Louis for the All-Star Game … could you imagine any other player doing something like that? The guy just gets it. And he might even be honored to participate in this thing, who knows.

But I want to turn the clock back to the 1970s and discuss Sadaharu Oh. Hank Aaron had just broken Babe Ruth’s career home run record. But in Japan, Oh was about to pass Aaron. He would finish his career in 1980, with 868 homers.

Not much was known about the Japanese leagues then. Oh’s home run total wasn’t taken very seriously because the ballparks were too small, the competition was like Triple-A, any number of reasons. It was true that guys like Randy Bass were going over to Japan and succeeding where they hadn’t in the States. But Oh certainly could have succeeded in the majors with that Mel Ott type leg kick. No one else was close to him in Japan.

The feeling started to change when Cecil Fielder made a mid-career stop in Japan. He returned, hit 51 homers in Detroit, and Japan was getting baseball attention in the U.S. again.

Next came Nomo. He took the U.S. by storm in 1995 and while his career didn’t sustain at that level, he proved that a Japanese player could succeed.

Ichiro came in 2001 and is still performing at the level he was when he arrived. He seems certain to get 3,000 hits, not even counting all the ones he had in Japan. Hideki “Godzilla” Matsui arrived a couple years later and has done well for the Yankees, and made history with his MVP performance earlier this month in the World Series. There are other guys with big postseason moments here such as So Taguchi, Tadahito Iguchi and Dave Roberts (born in Okinawa).

For the manager, we could go with Oh or Nagashima, but I’ll take Tetsuharu Kawakami, who won nine consecutive Japan Series in the late 1960s and early ’70s. Sort of like UCLA basketball at that time.

If you’re looking for a dark horse candidate to win this thing, look no further. Remember, Japan won the World Baseball Classic in 2006 and 2009. They know how to do it.

JAPAN SAMURAI

CA Shinnosuki Abe
2B Shigeru Chiba
RH Yu Darvish
OF Kusoke Fukudome
OF Isao Harimoto
2B Tadahito Iguchi
RH Kazuhisa Inao
RH Hisashi Iwakuma
2B Akinori Iwamura
CA Kenji Johjima
LH Masaichi Kaneda
RH Hiroki Kuroda
OF Hideki Matsui
SS Kazuo Matsui
RH Daisuke Matsuzaka
LH Masanori Murakami
3B Shuichi Murata
3B Shigeo Nagashima
RH Hideo Nomo
CA Katsuya Nomura
1B Sadaharu Oh
LH Hideki Okajima
OF Dave Roberts
RH Takashi Saito
RH Kazuhiro Sasaki
RH Eiji Sawamura
OF Tsuyoshi Shinjo
OF Ichiro Suzuki
OF So Taguchi

Next: The final team, the Dominican Republic.