Because the Japanese national baseball team beat the Cuban national team last night, 10-6, to win the inaugural World Baseball Classic series. Fidel Castro is probably beside himself. The Cubans, after all, are in the middle of their baseball season and were in mid-season form. The Japanese, by contrast, were only 3-3 in the first two rounds, and lost 2 out of three in their second round bracket, only advancing because the Mexicans knocked off Team USA the other night. But they then played the Koreans for the third time in the series, and finally beat them after having lost to them the first two times. Talk about a rivalry with some bad blood; Japan-Korea makes Yankees-Red Sox or Cowboys-Redskins look like a love-in. Those people genuinely dislike each other.
So the Cubans were probably feeling pretty good about facing a Japan team that was only 4-3. The Koreans, after all, had been 6-0 before losing to the Japanese. But in a single elimination final, it doesn't matter how many games you win in the first two rounds, only who wins the last game. And since it would give Fidel Castro heartburn, I'm glad the Japanese won the game. I just hope the Cuban baseball team doesn't end up on bread and water in the Cuban version of Guantanamo, which would be much less opulent than the American version.
