World Baseball Classic 2009

There's only a few hours left til the start of the second World Baseball Classic Series. The inaugural series three years ago was won by Japan, and they'll start their defence of the title by playing China in the opening game (today, 9.30am GMT).

If you can't watch your favourite out of the 16 competing nations on TV, you can pay a $20 subscription fee and watch the whole tournament live on the official website. For informed and analytical coverage, go to NPB Tracker - they're a fantastic baseball blog and I'm sure they'll be writing a lot about the tournament. For fevered whooping and exuberant trash-talk, I'll be live-blogging as much of the tournament as I can on this Twitter account.

Suzuki & Matsuzaka FTW!