My girlfriend is from China and we were thinking about moving there in the next year or so.

I’m a big baseball fan and have spent the last 24 years working at Bell Laboratories and have various skills that may be useful to you.

Please let me know if there are any job opportunities in China for MLB.

Thanks!

John

I am a physician here in the Miami/Ft. Lauderdale area and a hard core Baseball and Marlins fan.

First I want to congratulate you for pulling off the impossible. Your success in the World Baseball Classic was an incredible feat. Sports writers all over the country were talking down on the event. Huge complicated political issues. And you pulled off a seamless and awesome event that culminated in one of the most exciting events of baseball in my live time (I am 58 years old). I flew to San Diego for final series. It was perfect!

Now I am begging you to pull off another miracle. I understand you are heavily involved in the stadium situation here in Miami. With your background and expertise, I am sure you are well aware of the complexities here in Miami and the vexing relationship between Mr Samson and the City of Miami. Unfortunately he has come down to “name calling” and political poison. Unfortunately Mr. Samson emits of perception of talking down when he communicates. Even in our season ticket get-together before the season, Mr. Samson was talking to us in a demeaning manner. Here I am a die hard Marlins fan spending over $6000.00 a year with season Founder’s Box tickets, and he projects this suboptimal image.

We need your help in all critical discussions that the Marlins have with city, state, Miame-Dade county. The young and somewhat brash affect of Mr.Samson has been a serious issue with the political issues in this Hispanic Community (I am a son of a Colombian, myself).

I know you are a very busy man, but I hope you take these comment to heart.

Most sincerely yours,

Robert Rudas, M.D.

For the record this was posted about 3 weeks after the finals. I had the great pleasure to go to 11 of the games. What an experience! It was great being around so many baseball fans from around the world. Yankee and Red Sox fans sitting side by side, rooting for team USA.

Special thanks to you for getting this event together, and especially to my wife for putting up with me for the 2 months prior to the games. She attended 6 of the games(including the semi’s and finals) and my daughter’s were at 5 games also.

Looking forward to 2009! We’ll be the first ones in line for tickets! Thanks again, dan from still not sunny, but the skiing/boarding is still great Ca.

In the first round of group play teams should play each other twice for a total of six games. This will even out the “home” and “away” games at three apiece. This will also reduce need for tiebreakers.

After group play, the top two teams from each group will advance to a best-of-three elimination round. Best-of-three will allow teams to overcome a bad game. Keep the best-of-three format to the final. This will not significantly extend the duration of the tournament, and it will add more drama to the series.

Add a 3rd place consolation game. How cool would it have been to see Korea and the Dominican Republic face off against each other?

Finally make the WBC every two years. While the soccer World Cup occurs every four years, there is plenty of international soccer (European Cup, Copa America, World Cup qualifying, and more…) to keep fans happy. Unless MLB has plans for some regional tournaments, we’ll need something to keep us international baseball fans pacified during the “tween” years.

Great tournament Bob! I can’t wait to hear the details for 2009!

I have to bring up the last point because no one has done so yet. Perhaps I’m old-fashioned (although I’m only 29), but sometimes I prefer to listen to baseball games rather than watching them, and often I am driving so wouldn’t be able to watch the games. I’m sure many other people interested in the games couldn’t follow them because they weren’t near a TV, whether it was because they were in their office, were driving, etc. Please try to ensure that the games are on the radio next time – this will add to the potential audience. And see you all in 2009!

Thanks Bob for the blog, they were always so informative and interesting to read. This was the best idea for baseball ever. Even better then the wildcard decision.