Bringing the world closer together through baseball sure sounded like a good idea.

Of course, that was before most Americans found out how much other countries actually cared about beating them at their national pastime. First, Taiwan got caught trying to smuggle a few scouts disguised as umpires into a game to spy on South Korea before the start of the World Baseball Classic, nearly touching off an international incident. Then Canada and Mexico staged a full-scale brawl in the ninth-inning of their WBC encounter Saturday in Phoenix.

While the Taiwanese-South Korea tiff melted away after a diplomatic apology, not so the rumble between the neighbors on either side of the U.S. border. Video of the brawl went viral almost immediately, and while it may not have been the kind of publicity Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig had in mind when he started the WBC in 2006, it's created more attention on these shores for this year's event than the two previous tournaments combined. Suddenly, it's game on.