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It seems that professional sports seasons get longer and longer each year. What with exhibition games, the Olympics, and other special events, the there just isn't much of a break anymore. Take baseball, for instance. It feels like it has only been a few months since the White Sox swept the Houston Astros to win the World Series. Ordinarily, we would only be hearing a bit of news about spring training right now. This year, however, marks the inaugural entry of the World Baseball Classic into the offseason schedule.

In case you haven't heard, the World Baseball Classic is a tournament made up of 16 teams from 16 different countries around the world. The teams are initially divided into four separate pools and will play a round-robin style tournament for the first round. The two teams with the best record from each of these pools will advance to the second round. The second round will consist of two separate pools of four teams each. Another round-robin tournament will take place, and then the two top teams from each pool will advance to the semi-finals. For the semi-finals, the tournament switches to a single-elimination format, with the winners going on to the single-elimination finals. So essentially, the 16 teams will first get whittled down to 8, then to four, then to two, and then to the champion. All in all, there will be 39 World Baseball Classic games played from March 3 to March 20.

The action got underway in Pool A on Friday with two games taking place in East Asia. The first game pitted Korea against Chinese Taipei, while the second game featured a matchup between Japan and China. Both games took place in the Tokyo Dome in Japan.

The Korean team prevailed by a score of 2-0 over Chinese Taipei, thanks in large part to the contingent of Major League pitchers on the squad. Chan Ho Park, Byung-Hyun Kim, Jae Sao, and Dae-Sung Koo all saw action in the game and combined for the shutout.

Later in the evening, the Japanese national team took on the Chinese team. The Japan team features a very strong lineup of both Major League and Nippon Professional Baseball players, and that was evident in the final score of 18-2. Japan got on the board first in the top of the 2nd inning (China was the home team despite the fact that the game was being played in Japan) thanks to an error, a wild pitch, and a groundout by Seattle Mariners' right fielder Ichiro Suzuki. Japan added another run in the top of the 3rd inning before China tied the score up at two all by scoring a couple of runs in their half of the 4th.

But then Japan broke the game wide open by scoring multiple runs in the next four innings. Powered by three homeruns from players like Tsuyoshi Nishioka, Kosuke Fukudome, and Hitoshi Tamura, the Japanese team put up an impressive total of 18 runs in 8 innings. When the Chinese team failed to score at least 6 runs in their half of the 8th inning, the 10-run mercy rule (similar to what you might find in Little League play) was invoked and the game was called.

The United States team will play its first game on Tuesday March 7 when they take on the Mexican team at Chase Field (home to the Arizona Diamondbacks). Despite the fact that many managers have asked their star players not to participate in the World Baseball Classic in order to avoid any untimely injuries, the American roster is full of great talent. Alex Rodriguez, Derek Jeter, Derrek Lee, Chipper Jones, Huston Street, Roger Clemens, Dontrelle Willis, Jake Peavy, and Johnny Damon are just some of the guys that are expected to make appearances during the tournament. This of course gives the United States an excellent chance of winning, though they will face some very stiff competition along the way, most notably from Venezuela, the Dominican Republic, and Japan.

The list of teams participating in the first World Baseball Classic include the following: China, Chinese Taipei, Korea, Japan, Canada, Mexico, the United States, South Africa, Cuba, the Netherlands, Panama, Puerto Rico, Australia, Italy, Venezuela, and the Dominican Republic.