WBC - A work in progress

Having attended all six World Baseball Classic games in Toronto, it's clear that there are three major issues that need addressing.

1. Better Pitching - There's an argument to be made for better players all together, but most teams in the WBC have been able to field reasonably good hitters.

However, in 2009 every national team has been refused by at least one high profile pitcher.

According to local radio broadcasts, Team USA had to make 60 phone calls to patch together their rotation. Fortunately, the United States has the largest population base of any country participating, and they were still able to turn up the likes of Jake Peavy, Roy Oswalt and J.J. Putz.

Other teams were not so fortunate.

Venezuala would undoubtedly be stronger with Johan Sanatana as their anchor, and it was apparent to all that the absence of Jeff Francis, Ryan Dempster, Rich Harden and Eric Bedard led to the early dismissal of Team Canada.

The lack of high-calibre pitching hurt the quality of the games. Instead of seeing great hitters battle through at bats, most outs came from ground balls and pop flys. Not exactly gripping drama.

2. Shorter Games - Major League Baseball is trying to sell baseball to the rest of the world. The targets aren't the United States, Cuba or Japan where baseball is already loved, but Australia, Canada, Italy, South Africa and the Netherlands. Bud Selig wants the sport to take off in countries that have disposable incomes but baseball is not popular.

But a four hour game between Italy and Canada? Six, seven, eight pitching changes per team? Brutal.

Long, boring games will not capture people's imaginations. Marathon games are no way to sell a sport to fans of fast-paced games like hockey, soccer and basketball.

3. Better Umpires - In fairness, the officiating at the SkyDome wasn't biased.

It was just bad in general.

Phantom tags. Fluctuating strike zones. The calls were inconsistent for all four teams, that I can only assume the players were pulling their hair out.

In particular, Marvin Hudson, the home plate umpire for the Italy/Canada game was troublesome. With him at the plate, pitches in the same location were called as both balls and strikes.

Again, if the WBC is meant to be an introduction to baseball, shouldn't the officiating be at the highest level as well?

The World Baseball Classic is a great concept and, with tweaking, should become a major global event. But before that can happen, these three issues need to be addressed.