King Kaufman's Sports Daily

World Baseball Classic: Interested? Tickets available. Plus: Bob Costas on the "first African-American" and NBC's Olympics coverage. And: Kirby Puckett.

Read more: Sports, Baseball, Olympics, TV, NBC, King Kaufman, Sports Daily, 2006 Olympics

March 7, 2006 | I spent part of my little vacation over the weekend watching the World Baseball Classic games from the Tokyo Dome on a local station that normally carries a show called "Out There TV," which features a woman talking on the phone about crackpot UFO stuff while the screen shows a picture of her.

I think it's her, anyway, and I think she beat Korea vs. Chinese Taipei in the ratings.

But I'm excited about the Classic coming to North America, which it does starting Tuesday with a great matchup at 1 p.m. EST in Orlando, Fla., between the Dominican Republic and Venezuela, two of the three tournament favorites along with the United States. Those countries, though not these two teams, met for the Caribbean Series title last month, with Venezuela winning a thriller.

The starting pitchers for that game will be the last two American League Cy Young winners, Johan Santana for Venezuela and Bartolo Colon for the Dominicans. We can make fun all we want of the mostly American "Italy" team or the rest of the Washington Generals half of the tournament -- the Netherlands, South Africa, etc. -- and rest assured I plan to.

But Santana vs. Colon, with hitters such as Albert Pujols, David Ortiz, Miguel Cabrera and Bobby Abreu, that's pretty good stuff.

Major League Baseball didn't immediately return a call asking about ticket sales, but they've been reported slow in the U.S., and the games from Tokyo over the weekend were watched by an awful lot of empty seats.

The wingding of a finale, Korea over Japan in a big upset, drew 40,353, but the other five games, two of which featured Japan, averaged 12,122. The average attendance when Japan wasn't playing: 4,565.

Tuesday's Dominican Republic-Venezuela game, at the Ballpark at Disney's Wide World of Sports, is sold out. The place only holds 9,500 people, but I suspect a much larger crowd would show if the seats were available. Maybe even three times larger. They had a reported 8,000 watching a workout.

Searching at Ticketmaster, I wasn't able to get four tickets together for any of the games in Orlando, even the decidedly nonmarquee Italy-Australia game. For much of the rest of the tournament, though, good seats are still available, as they say.

At 8 a.m. EST Tuesday, eight hours before the first pitch of the U.S. vs. Mexico game, I was able to find four tickets together in Section 324, Row 6 at Chase Field, formerly known as Bank One Ballpark, in Phoenix. Those are near the bottom of the upper deck, next to the shallowest part of left field.

Next page: Your chance to see Jeter & Co. up close. Plus: Bob Costas on "African-American." And: Kirby Puckett