So Far, So Good, as WBC Enters Round Two

Team USA left Scottsdale for Anaheim on Saturday, continuing the World Baseball Classic without Barry Bonds hanging around, at least in person.

Bonds urged the team onward before its final game of the first round, the result being a 17-0 win over South Africa and a date with Japan this afternoon at Angel Stadium.

While it became difficult to separate events when the Bonds scandal and the WBC arrived at about the same time, and then to grasp which Commissioner Bud Selig will tie his legacy to, a change of venue might do them all some good.

So it is that half of the remaining WBC teams land in Anaheim, the other half in San Juan, Puerto Rico, the top two from each pool advancing next weekend to San Diego. Bonds will be left to his rehabilitation and ESPN camera crew in Arizona.

The teams expected to reach the second round are in -- the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Cuba and Puerto Rico are in one bracket; the U.S., Mexico, Korea and Japan in the other.

So far, no one has lost a major player to an injury sustained in the tournament, attendance has been decent, the television people claim the ratings are acceptable, and Cuban officials are 30 for 30 at every bed check. A spectator at a game in San Juan held up a sign in Spanish declaring, “Down with Fidel,” causing some uneasiness there when Cuban officials were angered because of the display.

But the international incidents have been kept to a minimum, which speaks to the sense of sportsmanship engendered by such a tournament, or the fact that Ozzie Guillen is safely in Tucson, or that Roger Clemens didn’t send some poor South African kid home with “Rawlings” imprinted on his neck.

It was a relieved U.S. squad that moved gingerly away from a first-round loss to Team Canada, and a realistic Manager Buck Martinez who took from that an intention to play his best players and pitch his best pitchers.

It helps that the players have been together for 10 days and are that much closer to opening day, the pitch limit jumps to 80 for the second round, and nobody’s feeling all that unbeatable anymore.

As Canada and the five pitchers few ever heard of showed them, even the U.S. is vulnerable to a bad day, and pool play tends to expose those.

“I think we’ll let the game dictate that more in the second round than we did in the first round,” Martinez said. “We have an obligation to get these players ready for their respective teams when they go back, and I think that was a concern early on.

“Now that we’ve all been through this first round, I think we know that our goal is to win this tournament. I will use the players according to the game situations.”

Martinez will give the ball to Jake Peavy today against Japan. Right-hander Koji Uehara, who in five innings gave up seven hits and two earned runs against China in the first round, starts for Japan, which is managed by the legendary Sadaharu Oh.

Peavy pitched three brisk, complication-free innings against Mexico on Tuesday, and he has some working knowledge of Japanese hitters. Peavy and several of his teammates took part in an exhibition series in Japan after the 2004 season, and Peavy pitched in two of those games.

Hideki Matsui, Tadahito Iguchi and Kenji Johjima declined to play in the tournament, but Ichiro Suzuki leads off a lineup of discerning hitters.

“These guys don’t swing and miss,” Peavy said.

Alex Rodriguez compared Asian baseball players to European basketball players as far as the soundness of their skills and understanding of the subtle parts of the game.

In terms of game fundamentals, he said, the Asian players are superior to their American counterparts.

“Our game is lacking that a little because of the power game,” he said. “I love what the Europeans have done for the NBA and what the Asians have done for us.”

In today’s games in San Juan, Cuba plays Venezuela and, after that, Puerto Rico plays the Dominican Republic.

Angel right-hander Bartolo Colon is expected to start for the Dominican team.