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PANAMA! PANAMA!
The people of Panama are not happy that Mariano Rivera has declined to participate in the WBC for their country.
The link is to a Spanish story, so you will have to forgive me for my imperfect translation.
Rivera was named to the preliminary 56-man roster, but declined to play. Various reasons are given, from "I won't be in shape" to "nivel necesario" para enfrentar a las otras novenas, that is Rivera doesn't think that Panama is good enough to compete with the other teams in it group (Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Netherlands).
One writer tried to appeal to Rivera's national pride. The president of the Panamanian baseball federation, Franz Wever, might have said that Rivera wasn't sufficiently Panamanian, but has backed off that statement.
Wever might not be an overly popular person among some baseball players in Panama. Olmedo Saenz of the Dodgers said he won't play because of personality differences with Wever.
Panama's team will have at least three big leaguers on it: Bruce Chen, Carlos Lee, and Einar Diaz. Although I've heard that Panama might be trading Chen to another country since he's used to it. And I'm somewhat surprised with all the moving around of players to different countries, such as Italy's Mike Piazza and the Netherlands Mark Mulder, that Chen didn't end up on the Chinese squad.
I'm just glad there's no country called Kajagoogoo.
That, and a really bad team.
Sorry, even though it's my team, I couldn't resist.
We can leave the other teams behind
Cause your friends don't bat and if they don't bat
Well they're no team of mine
Though an "ace" we'll never find
And we can act like we've got some guys who can hurl
We don't think our fans will mind
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