Gladwell notes early on in the book that one reason that some people are super successful is the extrodinary amount of time an individual puts into his/her craft. For example, Bill Gates started programming very early on in high school. He had unprecedented access to super computers that only a few hundred people had back in those days. By the time he got to Harvard and dropped out, he had amassed over 10,000 hours of programming computer software. 10,000 hours! I started college in 99 and I’ve probably put in a ballparked 5000 since.

Gladwell argues that 10,000 hours seems to be the magic number that someone has to put in before he becomes a master of the skill. Hardwork, coupled with luck, helps to explain how someone like Gates could have built his mansion with stacks of Benjamins if he wanted to.

Anyways, the reason I bring this up is because while I was @ the doctor’s today, I picked up a copy of SI and on the cover was a picture of a baseball catcher who looked like he was 25-ish. The a headline read, “The Chosen One”. No, the article wasn’t about Lebron James and how he could dominate baseball if he played. Instead, the artcile was about a 16 year old kid from Las Vegas and how he is the next A-Rod + Pujols + Griffey.

While reading the article, I thought back to Outliers. I later found an interview ESPN did with  Bryce where he talked about how he would play roughly 130 games a year and how at 3 years old, his dad put him on his  6 year old brother’s little league baseball team. So lets just say that Bryce plays baseball for about 2/3 of a year and that each game or practice lasts about 3 hours. That’s roughly 9000 something hours, just 1000 shy of the 10,000 hours he needs of being great! And he’s only 16.

Of course, there are still several things that need to happen before the guy even steps into the bigs and becomes the greatest baseball player ever.  But if there’s an example of an outlier or phenom in the making, Bryce Harper would be it.

Of course, the “real” world champions is subjective. The die hard MLB’ers will probably argue that the Philies are the world champs and that if you pit them against Japan, the Philies would win. That would make for an interesting series, however unlikely that it would ever happen. Technically though, from the purest sense of the term “world champs”, the Japanese team is the best team in the world because they won the WORLD baseball classic and are therefore the best team in the world.

As an American though, it’s a tough pill to swallow, to watch our team lose a game we invented while playing on our home court. It’s kind of like the world champion of Chinese checkers hailing from Zimbabwe. China would NEVER allow something like that to happen, but it seems like we’re content with the WBC crown going to another country. I guess that’s understandable since most people don’t care about baseball. But to me, this is unacceptable. In all fairness to this years team, they did have some of that chip-on-the-shoulder mentatlity that Team USA bball did after getting their ass handed to them at the 2004 Olympics. What appeared to be lacking from this team was a real passion to win the damn thing. I think they had one great game against Puerto Rico, but that was it. We certainly weren’t as arrogant as we were in the first WBC, but still, it’s still a real shame that we can’t put together a decent squad that can win it all.

On a non-WBC but still baseball related news, I heard on the radio that A-Rod frequented the services of a madam in NY while he was still married. Suprisingly, I haven’t heard a peep about this on ESPN or any other news show, as if he needed any more press. If this is true, is anyone surprised? Pro athlete. Gifted. Ridiculously rich. What’s not to do but to go fuck everything up. Even if he hits 1000 homeruns, his reputation is permanently stained from all the crap that has followed him since becoming a Yankee, proving that becoming a Yankee means joining the dark side. What a douche.

A hypothetical question I posed to myself: If given the chance to play in the WBC for team Chinese-Taipei (because I’m not good enough to play for team USA or any other team in general), would I? No, I wouldn’t, but it would be a tough call. It’s one of those once in a life time type of thing. It’s sort of like catching the 755th home run ball from Barry Bonds at Dodger stadium (if it happened there). As a Dodger fan, your’e supposed to throw the ball back. But as a fan of baseball, you have a piece of history in your hand. How can you through that back, especially when you can ebay that sucker for thousands of dollars. Granted equating that with playing for CT isn’t perfectly similar, but I think my point is made. It would be awesome to play in front of the folks back there, but (cue patriotic music) I bleed red, white and blue and there’s no way I would play for another country….. unless CT paid gave me a lifetime supply of beef noodle soup, in which case I’d reconsidered.