Usually baseball is a sport that has little international significance. Soccer/football leads entire nations to spill into the streets and ignite things in joy or despair, all of the Olympic sports have great bouts of nationalism attached to them every four years, but baseball always seems to be a highly isolated affair.

Until Japan beat South Korea 5-3 in the World Baseball Classic, on Monday that is. In a nail-biting 10 inning battle, international relations can elaborately and completely falsely be thrown amiss.

Right now, North Korea is loading their Taepodong rocket onto a launch pad, preparing for the launch of their "communications satellite" early next month, a launch that could very well be the most poorly-conceived missile test ever.

Both South Korea and Japan have vocalized their obvious concerns, and Japan has gone as far as threatening to shoot the "satellite" down if it can. Cooperation between two vital partners in the East could very well bring about an end to issue, as they're pretty much the only regional powers who seem to be concerned.

Now that Japan has defeated South Korea though, if one of the countries infuriates North Korea over this launch test, what incentive does the other have to support the other? Oh sure, there's that whole notion of regional security and the impediment of militarization, but if North Korea decides to try and wallop either Japan or South Korea, a superb competitor in the next World Baseball Classic will have been eliminated!

Of course, this strategy of getting a leg up on the competition by tricking rivals into instigating war without support could be risky. If they both do nothing, then North Korea could gain confidence and begin to throw its weight around even more, perhaps by fielding a baseball team in which each individual player is strapped to a nuclear bomb.

South Korea and Japan are two guys at a bar, both aiming for one girl, but knowing full well that neither of them have a chance with her unless they both utilize their charms. Both intend to nod and smile, walking over to the gal, and then veer off onto the dance floor, leaving their former accomplice stupefied and embarrassed, so that they can then take advantage of the sudden loss in confidence to win a later game of poker or something.

This contrived scenario has gone on long enough I think, subconsciously I think I just wanted to say something about the WBC, because it was awesome and deserved far more attention than it recieved.