Classic

Zach’s piece Friday summed up a lot of why I’ve really enjoyed the past few weeks of baseball – and why everyone I’ve talked to has said that at the very least, the World Baseball Classic has been more entertaining than they thought it would be. Many have been floored by the passion and the drive displayed behind the emblems of countries from around the world.
This past week, several things have assured me that baseball is alive and well all over the world. Last week, the day after Venezuela was eliminated, I was walking down the street here in JP, wearing my Venezuela cap. I’d forgotten I’d had it on; it was just the hat I’d threw on before heading out the door. As I walked, I was passed by a group of 16 or 17 year old kids. As they passed me, one noticed my cap. He stopped, and as I passed, yelled back at me. “Venezuela?” he shouted. “We beat Venezuela!” There was bravado in his voice, and pride (mixed in with good old-fashioned cocky sports fan mentality). He was Dominican, as is a lot of my neighborhood. I laughed back at him and tipped my cap.
The guy at my corner store yesterday was watching the Cuba-DR game when I walked up to the counter; it was still knotted at 0-0, in the 5th. It was a taut, impressive game; neither pitcher gave any ground, the defense was superb, the tension palpable. We talked over the game. Today I went back in. “Tough loss for you guys yesterday,” I said. He tried to hide his disappointment, but it was plain. He cared.
My friend Rob, in Toronto, has been in constant communication with me these past couple weeks. At first, it was just to check in on Canada’s games; there was predictable and understandable crowing after Canada’s stunning upset victory over the US. But even after Canada had been eliminated, the communication continued. Rob’s a hockey guy, through and through; he has a grudging respect for baseball, but nothing that ever made him watch more than a few minutes unless I forced him to. Yet here he was, texting me every 5 minutes to talk about the Mexican team, or the Cuban team, or to make fun of Johnny Damon. This tournament, at least for a brief time, has turned him into a baseball fan.
Many of us have felt that passion before. We have a team; the Red Sox inspire that kind of loyalty. Many MLB teams do; the Phillies and the Dodgers and the Cubs and the Yankees to name a few. And until this tournament, the MLB remained the pinnacle of fandom; just ask the throngs of Japanese media that followed Ichiro’s every move, or the scores of Sox hat-wearing teens on the streets of the DR. Baseball fans around the world used to view US competition as the place where their countries could be represented, and though there have been myriad successes in the internationalization of the game through that corridor, there was also a distance imposed. No longer. Now Korea, Mexico, Cuba, and Canada can say that they faced they faced the best and beat them. Now Japan, the DR, and the United States are on notice. Now baseball has gained buy-in in places like South Africa, Italy, and the Netherlands.
All over the world, baseball is being reborn. A lot of us don’t see it, I don’t think. We live with this game, at this level. Compared to their rivals, the team from the United States looked shell-shocked; even in this time of rampant patriotic posturing, there was a passion gap. How many of you watched to the bitter end our final game in this tournament? Two teams were eliminated in that game, but one filed solemnly off the field, while the other claimed victory. Why? Because they’d beaten the United States of America. They’d beaten a hand-picked team worth millions of dollars, among the very best at what they did. Both teams were going home, but only one was happy to have been there. Did you see the end of last night’s semi-final? I don’t blame you if you didn’t; it ended at around 2:30 in the morning here. What you would have seen, after Japan completed its emotional 6-0 victory over the Korean team, was that Korean club emerging from their dugout and applauding their own fans, mostly Korean