Making a World Series Pitch

The first official pitch will be thrown tonight in Tokyo, and on Friday David Ortiz will take batting practice in Orlando, Fla., Carlos Beltran will shag a fly ball in San Juan, and Derek Jeter will glove a grounder in Phoenix, all part of the inaugural World Baseball Classic.

Baseball will cease to be an Olympic sport after the 2008 Beijing Games, but Major League Baseball is thriving in what Commissioner Bud Selig routinely calls its “golden era,” and the game’s leadership predicts a period of international growth for what generations have known as America’s pastime.

Organized by Major League Baseball, the players’ association and the International Baseball Federation, the 16-team tournament begins with seemingly equal parts anticipation and trepidation.

“Like anything you do for the first time in this sport, there’s always resistance to change,” said Selig, who in his tenure has helped institute interleague play, three-division leagues and wild-card playoff entries. “It’s natural. I really understand that change comes slowly.”

At a time when there are as many foreign-born players in the major leagues as ever, and after years of what he called fair criticism for falling behind other major sports’ growth into Europe and Asia, Selig said the moment was right to push baseball further.

“I mean, China is participating,” he said. “China. Can you imagine that?”

In first-round games tonight, Korea plays Chinese Taipei and Japan plays China. The other three brackets open Tuesday, with the U.S. team in Phoenix, the high-powered Dominican Republic team in Orlando and Cuba in Puerto Rico. The top two teams in each of the four-team groups advance to the second round.

“This is the first critical step in taking this game worldwide,” Selig said. “There is so much out there.”

Public interest appears to be high in such baseball-rich nations as the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Mexico and Japan, whose players routinely help fill the rosters of major league teams, along with U.S. territory Puerto Rico. Most of the teams in the tournament have major leaguers on their rosters.

The tournament averted a significant credibility issue when the U.S. government allowed Cuba to participate, reversing an earlier decision based on a long-standing financial embargo against the communist country.

And, according to Selig, future tournaments will include more teams from Europe -- Italy and the Netherlands are participants this year -- where the game has been slower to take hold. For baseball, the World Baseball Classic effectively replaces the Olympics; the International Olympic Committee voted in July to drop baseball after the 2008 Beijing Games.

Paul Archey, senior vice president of international business operations for Major League Baseball, estimated 800,000 tickets would be sold for the 39 games played at seven venues over 18 days, beginning with tonight’s games at the Tokyo Dome. The semifinals and final at San Diego’s Petco Park, March 18 and 20, are sold out. Second-round games will be played in Puerto Rico and at Angel Stadium, where about 100,000 tickets have been sold for the six games from March 12 through 16, according to a baseball official.

Sixteen of the games will be broadcast by ESPN and ESPN2, and all 39 by Spanish-language ESPN Deportes.

An ESPN spokesman said the network would not speculate on ratings.

“Since it is a new event,” Nate Smeltz said, “we have nothing to compare it to.”

USA Baseball officials generally had their pick of the best American players, with such notable exceptions as Barry Bonds, who is recovering from a knee injury, but on Wednesday had two key pitchers withdraw. Left-handers Billy Wagner of the New York Mets and C.C. Sabathia of the Cleveland Indians announced they were not far along enough in their training to pitch effectively.

It is the potential for injury, particularly in early spring, when most players are easing into baseball after a winter off, that has generated most of the criticism. Organizers contend they considered holding the tournament in the fall, after the World Series, and in midsummer, suspending the season as the National Hockey League does for the Olympics.

Citing scheduling conflicts at the other times of the year and player preference, organizers planned the tournament through the heart of March, thinning spring training clubhouses of superstars and role players alike. New York Yankee owner George Steinbrenner, who will lose Jeter, Alex Rodriguez and Johnny Damon, among others, to the tournament, has been the most vocal of the detractors.

“We don’t like it that well,” he told reporters in Tampa, Fla., at the start of spring training. “If a player gets hurt, he’s risking a lot. But it was Selig’s idea and he wants to do it, so I suppose we’re going to do it.”

Archey called the scheduling “an issue we wrestled with longer than probably any other issue,” adding that not only did ownership approve of the concept and the timing, “but they did so on the condition clubs would not stand in the way of players who wanted to play.”

Steinbrenner’s public resistance has tested that agreement, reached two years ago in the event’s planning stages.

Gene Orza, chief operating officer of the players’ association, said an informal poll of players aided in the scheduling.

“My own experience is that all the people who suggest playing it another time of year have not done their research, have not put pen to paper,” he said.

Many players, pitchers in particular, backed out because they thought they would not be at the top of their game and would be vulnerable to injury. That organizers instituted strict pitch limits lessened the fear only slightly, and the line between apprehension and disinterest blurred in the final weeks before the tournament.

Some think this is largely an American condition, that nationalism in the name of baseball runs stronger in countries where the game is a way out of poverty, and where America’s national game has become theirs.

Said one National League executive: “Do you hear any of the Dominican players complaining about the potential for injuries? What about the Venezuelan players?”

Like the U.S. team, the Dominicans suffered key losses in recent days, as right fielder Vladimir Guerrero and left fielder Manny Ramirez announced they would sit out, and starting pitcher Pedro Martinez has a nagging toe injury that will keep him from pitching until the second round, if at all.

Even so, the Dominican Republic lineup, which includes Albert Pujols, Miguel Tejada, Ortiz and Alfonso Soriano, is regarded as the best in the tournament.

“Our guys take it very serious and take a lot of pride in this stuff,” Dominican Manager Manny Acta said. “[In the Dominican], they’re seeing this as an opportunity to see the type of baseball we have. I’ve been telling my wife and friends, ‘If we don’t win, I probably won’t be able to come back to the country. They’ll hang me.’ ” He added, “I’m joking.”

Roger Clemens, who is delaying retirement at least long enough to pitch for the U.S. team, dismissed the notion that other countries held the advantage of stronger motivation.

“The guys that’ll be down there, we’re going in with the understanding these other countries are going to come after us pretty good,” he said.

Jake Peavy, the San Diego Padre right-hander who will start the U.S. opener against Mexico, added: “I can tell you right now, we go out on that field, and you’ve got your country’s name across your chest, it’s going to be on.”

U.S. players will earn little or no money for their participation beyond the usual in-season meal and tip allowance of $83.50 a day. Net revenue, if there is any, will be divided among the 15 teams -- Cuba excluded -- and the host federations are free to distribute the money as they wish.

The players’ association will determine U.S. players’ share, and whether it will go to the participating players only or the general membership. The tournament winner and runner-up will take a larger percentage of the revenue.

Two days before the games began, Selig insisted the World Baseball Classic would grow in scope and acceptance. The plan remains to hold the tournament again in 2009, then every four years thereafter.

“At this moment, I’m excited about it and I’m proud of the players who thought enough of their sport to take it to heights none of us can comprehend,” he said. “They put their own myopic interests aside and wanted to play for the good of the game.

“I guess the thing I’m sure of today, four years from now, eight years from now, I’ll be long gone, and this thing will be huge.”

*

Times staff writer Larry Stewart contributed to this report.