2013 World Baseball Classic officially begins on Saturday

If you’re looking for a good sports book to put you in the baseball mood, you might want to check out “Long Shot” by baseball great Mike Piazza and co-author Lonnie Wheeler. Released on Feb. 12, this autobiography of Piazza tells of how he rose from getting picked in the 62nd round of the 1988 baseball draft to become the greatest hitting catcher in the history of major league baseball.

This book must be pretty good because it debuted at No. 13 last Thursday on Publishers Weekly’s hardcover nonfiction bestsellers list. Another baseball book, "Francona: The Red Sox Years" by Terry Francona and Dan Shaughnessy, was No. 8 on that same list. I read that book a few weeks ago, and if you like baseball, I highly recommend that you check it out.

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Something else that might put you in the baseball mood this week is the World Baseball Classic, which is scheduled to begin Saturday in Japan and Taiwan. Teams in this year’s tournament will include Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Chinese Taipei, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Italy, Japan, Korea, Mexico, the Netherlands, Puerto Rico, Spain, United States and Venezuela. This tournament is always action packed, and every game of it will be televised on the MLB Network if you’d like to check it out.

Founded in 2005, this year’s installment of this international baseball tournament is the third all-time with the first two tourneys played in 2006 and 2009. Japan won both of those earlier tournaments, and the U.S. has never finished higher than fourth place. In other words, even though this event was created in part by Major League Baseball and the Major League Baseball Players Association, the U.S. is sort of an underdog in the World Baseball Classic. I can’t think of a better reason to watch this year’s tournament and pull for U.S. team.

Players on the U.S. team include Craig Kimbrel, Jimmy Rollins, Mark Teixeira, David Wright and Shane Victorino. Joe Torre is the team’s manager, and Greg Maddux is the pitching coach. Dale Murphy is the first base coach, and Willie Randolph is the third base coach. Larry Bowa is the bench coach.

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From the weird news file this week, I saw an item in Ripley’s Believe It or Not! Wednesday of last week that talked about ultra-marathon runner, Andrew Hedgman of Paeroa, New Zealand. According to Ripley’s, Hedgman ran 621 miles last June from Brisbane to Sydney, Australia in just 15 days.

In February and March 2010, Hedgeman, 25, also ran the entire length of New Zealand in 28 days, an average of 50 miles per day. When you consider that a full marathon is 26.1 miles, this is pretty amazing. He did take one day off during that four-week period as he battled shin splints and a torn muscle.

Hedgeman’s writing a book about his experiences, and I bet it would be pretty interesting to read. It’s not every day that you get to read about a guy who can run that far for that long.