(A quick post before taking to the WTPL airwaves (www.wtplfm.com) tonight from 6:30-8.)

Truth be told, I was too lazy to get up and grab the channel guide next to the TV in my hotel room. It was Saturday afternoon, and I knew the Bruins were playing, but I didn’t know how to dial in NESN – so I decided to go pre-digital, and flip manually through the channels until I found it.

But a funny thing happened on the way to Jack Edwards.

Before I came anywhere near talk of Gretzky’s Office, D-to-D passes or a diatribe on the need for wooden sticks, I stumbled across something else. Something sunny. Something special. Something awe-striking, attention-stealing and instantly intriguing. I stumbled across the World Baseball Classic.

And not only was I hooked immediately – but I’m starting to think baseball’s worldwide exhibition might actually be a good idea.

Initially it was mere curiosity that caused me to stop on ESPN’s coverage. I spotted No. 45 on the Dominican mound, quickly realized it was Pedro Martinez, and wanted to see what might be left in that legendary right arm. But it was what I watched over the next few hours that left me convinced.

It all started, of course, with Pedro, who looked downright dominant in the course of three relief innings, allowing just a single while whiffing four of the final five batters he faced. Now, up against a Netherlands team relying on Randall Simon as a primary power source (sausages beware!), he wasn’t exactly facing the ’27 Yankees. Or even the ’08 San Francisco Giants, for that matter.

But I found myself roundly impressed nevertheless. Despite three downtrodden and injury-ridden years that leave his major league future in doubt, and essentially make this tournament a tryout for Martinez, he took the mound with the charisma and confidence we in Boston came to expect from him.

He was unafraid to pitch in the strike zone, and had total command in doing so. He threw 32 of his 40 pitches for strikes, and in the process mixed his offerings so effectively that he blew away each of his strikeout victims with a fastball topping out between 88 and 92 mph. Again, it was only the Dutch. And not a lineup of major leaguers. But for perspective on how much life Pedro had in his pitches, consider that Dominican starter Edinson Volquez had one fewer strikeout in his three innings – despite a heater that hits 96.

The draw of the WBC didn’t end when Pedro’s day did, though. There was plenty of drama left in that tilt, as the Netherlands pulled off a 3-2 upset over the DR’s team of all-stars, and there was even more theatrics as the USA took on Canada.

Before a startlingly large and loud crowd at the Rogers Centre – where baseball has seemed a distant afterthought since banners were going up in what was then the SkyDome – the North American neighbors staged what was from start to finish a compelling game loaded with emotion. From the moment Jake Peavy visibly reacted to a strikeout that stranded runners at second and third in the first inning there was a sense that the border war meant so much more than the standard exhibition, and when things reached a head later on it was as intense as anything you’ll see over the next five or six months.

When Seattle farmhand Phillippe Aumont retired David Wright, Kevin Youkilis and Curtis Granderson to escape a bases-loaded, none out jam in the seventh; when David Davidson whiffed future-hall-of-famer Chipper Jones to leave them loaded again in the eighth; and when J.J. Putz gave Brian McCann a huge hug of relief after getting a save via Jason Bay flyout, it certainly looked very much like midseason baseball at its finest.

It was fun to watch. And, judging by the reactions of players from all nations across all walks of life, it’s been fun to play. Whether it’s the dugouts flooding every time a Caribbean team scores a run, the Americans sweating it out with the game in the balance, or all of Asia going crazy for continental supremacy, these games clearly matter to the players.

And now, over the next couple weeks, they’ll matter to me, too.