USA to open World Baseball Classic against Mexico

Triple Crown winner Miguel Cabrera is going to play for Venezuela in the upcoming World Baseball Classic.

Cabrera was among the first 32 players — 12 major leaguers — to commit to playing in the tournament that begins March 2 with games hosted by two-time defending champion Japan and Taiwan.

The Mets' David Wright and Minnesota's Joe Mauer will play for the United States. The team managed by Joe Torre has been placed in Pool D for the first round with Italy, Mexico (The Dodgers' Adrian Gonzalez), and Canada (Toronto's Brett Lawrie and Minnesota's Justin Morneau). The U.S. plays its first game March 8 against Mexico at Chase Field in Phoenix.

Torre is ready for some tough competition in the opening round of the tournament.

"It's just sort of like managing the Yankees for me because everybody for the USA always want to put on their Sunday best to make sure that they see a team that they're going to be proud of," Torre said Monday at the winter meetings in Nashville, Tenn. "So that's one thing I guess I'm sort of used to, is that when they see that USA across our chest, they're going to — it's going to get them to another level, and we have to be ready for that."

Continue reading about the opening of the World Baseball Classic against Mexico at USAToday.com!

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Mexican pitcher close to MLB glory | guadalajarareporter.com

Back in August, baseball fans fond of a wager would have got slim odds on the Boston Red Sox not making it into the MLB playoffs.  Mexican fans were especially excited. Their very own slugger Adrian “Titan” Gonzalez was leading most of the stats and a successful post-season could have tipped the balance for his MVP shot.

Yovani Gallardo

The Red Sox’s dramatic September slump (6-19) and agonizing final regular season game loss to the Orioles put paid to that scenario, as well as Terry Francona’s seven-year relationship with the ball club.

Adrian “Titan” Gonzalez

But Mexico still has much to cheer about this October in the guise of Yovani Gallardo, the Milwaukee Brewers’ 25-year-old pitcher, who carried on his fine  regular season form (17-10) by giving up just one run and four hits in eight innings in the National League Division Series opener against the Arizona Diamondbacks last Friday. And today (Friday, October 7, 4 p.m. CT) he gets the chance for even more glory as he takes to the mound in the deciding game five of the series against the D-Backs (2-2).

Overshadowed somewhat by Gonzalez’s epic season, Gallardo is now getting all the attention he deserves both north and south of the border.  Born in the state of Michoacan, he moved north at an early age and was drafted in 2004 after graduating from Trimble Tech High School in Texas.

Eulogies for Gallardo – always referred to as Mexican by this country’s media but mostly as Mexican-American in the United States – poured in after his win last week in the playoff opener.  “If you look at the last month, he’s really taken a step forward,” Brewers star Ryan Braun said. “I put him up there with any other ace in baseball.”

Gallardo has “matured into one of the best homegrown pitchers the Milwaukee Brewers have produced,” wrote Tom Haudricourt of the Milwaukee Wisconsin Journal Sentinel this week.

Meanwhile, Gonzalez was left trying to fathom exactly what went wrong for the Red Sox in September.  He surprised some fans by wondering if the season’s conclusion hadn’t been written in the heavens. “I’m a firm believer that God has a plan and it wasn’t in his plan for us to move forward,” he said after the final game.

He also suggested the Red Sox’s grueling television schedule had hurt the team’s chances.

Still, Gonzalez needn’t feel sorry for himself for too long. He’s on a seven-year contract worth 154 million dollars and his stats this year speak for themselves:  Batting average: .338 (2nd place in MLB), RBIs: 117 (5th), Hits: 213 (1st), OBP: .410 (6th), Home Runs: 27 (32nd).  For Red Sox fans, April 2012 can’t come soon enough.

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