The World Baseball Classic has been a successful event, however, like other events related to Major League Baseball, they do not have the full support of that institution or are held out of time.
If we go to the Minor Leagues, everything has been done to make Major League teams treat their Minor Leaguers like human beings. Salaries and living conditions have been improved for some, however there is extended training for Rookie League players.
From mid-February to June, extended training takes place, housing the players in the complexes, but they receive salaries of $70 to $240 a week, playing six games a week. If that’s not slavery, it’s the closest thing.
Once MLB’s laboratory of excellence, the winter leagues of the Caribbean have been thrown at all sorts of barriers to prevent talented players from participating in our national pastime. With the devilish extreme fatigue and the Arizona Fall League, the gringos have tried to undermine the Caribbean tournaments as much as possible.
The same is true of the World Classic. The establishment places all the limitations on this event, anachronistic for the rest. While the Soccer World Cup is traditionally held after the different tournaments of the main countries have finished, the Major Leagues do not allow it to be held after the World Series, or in the middle of the tournament, if not before the start of the season.
One sees the USA “Dream Team” losing to the Mexican team or advancing to the quarterfinals beating Colombia 3-2. All those talented players, like many of the DR ones, are out of shape, looking very bad. against pitchers who haven’t thrown beyond Class A or are outside of organized baseball.
MLB doesn’t care how profitable the classic is, which has put Miami from top to bottom, averaging more than 30,000 fans per game, including games, for example, between Venezuela or the Dominican Republic against Israel or Nicaragua at noon.
The presence of the Dominican, Puerto Rican and Venezuelan teams has been the envy of a LoanDeport Park that remains empty throughout the regular season, with the worst attendance in 2022 (904 thousand fans in the season, 11,165 per game). . In ten classic games, 296,000 parishioners attended (30,000 per challenge).
The Majors insist on playing in inhospitable countries for baseball like England, but they do not fully support the Minors, the winter leagues or a World Classic that has been successful, but carried out out of season and in the end means a distraction for the major league emporium.