ON DECK: Different styles of play at World Baseball Classic

There's been a lot of hoopla over the World Baseball Classic and what it means. I think I've figured it out.

National writers like Jon Morosi have been writing column after column about how the USA needs to win in order to prove that it's still the powerhouse of international baseball. No, they don't.

Others talk about how pitch counts and lack of star power makes the tournament a joke. No, it doesn't.

The WBC is a marketing tool, promoting baseball as an international game (which it is) to a world which now doesn't even have baseball in the Olympics.

I love it because I love watching the different interpretations of the game. The free-swinging Latin countries against the almost militaristic Asian ones. The underdog start-ups like Italy and Spain against the mighty USA and the Dominican Republic. There's so much passion going on in these games that it doesn't bother me that the tournament isn't perfect. It's fun, and that's all I need to be interested.