World Baseball Classic – Maybe Team USA Isn’t All that Good?

Tonight Team USA lost to  Japan 9-4, thereby being bounced from the World Baseball Classic.  Japan basically put this game away in the 4th inning, scoring 5 runs and sending Roy Oswalt to the showers.  Team USA got farther this time around than before.  This time, Team USA made the semifinals.  Last year, Team USA was eliminated in the quarterfinals.

Let’s  get one thing clear from the start.  If you call yourself a baseball fan and you’re not following this tournament, you’re flat-out not as big a baseball fan as you claim to be.  The players care and, judging by the ethnically diverse faces in the stands, so do the fans from all the other countries.  You can’t decide to be an aloof teenager about this and say “meh” and call yourself anything other than a casual fan.  These games matter.  The American players are, for all practical purposes, playing for free.

Listening to ESPN Radio or MLB Radio on Sirius/XM, there is everything from rationalizing to anger to (false) apathy.  You’ll hear the complaints that the American players are still basically Spring Training whereas the other teams play into the winter.  Never mind that Daisuke Matsuzaka, the winning pitcher and undefeated in WBC play is the Red Sox #3 starter, and Akinori Iwamura, who hit the game-killing triple, is the starting second baseman for the AL Champion Tampa Bay Rays.  They seemed to be able to perform.  Oswalt himself said he started his preseason training regimen several weeks earlier to get ready.  It didn’t help him tonight.  You’ll hear that the games are too far apart.  The schedule is the same for all the teams, guys.  Why can the other teams adapt?  Or you’ll hear that the rules aren’t perfect so the tournament is bogus.  Chipper Jones is popping off at the mouth not just about the WBC, but the very nice city of Toronto also.  (Never mind that Chipper Jones has no business being on the roster – not only can he not stay healthy at his age, but there are many American third basemen that are simply better players than he).

So, many fans, players and commentators are rationalizing this defeat by saying that the tournament is imperfect, and it doesn’t (yet) have the importance of soccer’s World Cup, so who cares?  Well, if you saw Team USA’s reaction after David Wright’s game-winning hit against Puerto Rico advanced Team USA to this game, you’d probably say they cared.  So we can’t say that the tournament doesn’t matter.

I want Team USA to win.  I know it’s very passe but I want our country to win every international tournament.  If they have a Chutes and Ladders tournament, I want our side to dominate.  So, I think Team USA’s defeats are very good not only for our team long term, but also good for the game of baseball in America.  In basketball, we woke up to the cold, hard reality in 2004 that the world had caught up to “our” game, and in reality, it wasn’t our game anymore.  We only had the honor of inventing it and having the strongest national league.  In 2008, we put together a very strong team and demanded that the players take it seriously, including a 3-year international training and playing commitment, and put Mike Krzyszewski in charge (he started coaching at West Point – think he took the gig seriously?)  I was enormously proud of that team when it did, in fact, win the Gold Medal, watching the game live at 2 am.  And by the way, Team USA did not just roll over the competition as the 1992 team did in Barcelona.  Spain was in that game until the end.  Team USA won, but not as a prohibitive favorite.  And the fact that the world has caught up has made the NBA better.  Fundamental basketball is back in the NBA, and we’re done with 82-76 migraine-inducing games night after night.

The difference is that, in the World Baseball Classic, we didn’t get our one go-around where we just smashed the competition before the world caught up.  We found that we aren’t even the favorite from the get-go, and that’s tough to take.  Team USA has been demonstrated to not be the best team on the field.  But because our preconceived notion of non-competitive superiority was never validated, many of us are instead invalidating the tournament because we just can’t believe what we are seeing.  Believe it – baseball is no longer exclusively our game.  But we should have known that all along.  Look at Ichiro Suzuki, Hideo Nomo, Roberto Clemente, Albert Pujols, Alex Rodriguez, Fernando Valenzuela, Chien-Ming Wang – some of the game’s brightest stars past and present – all foreign and adding so much richness to this game. (Well, we could all do without Alex Rodriguez at this point, couldn’t we?)  In fact, if you want to understand how the Braves have fallen so far, so quickly, count how many foreign players are on the team.  Instead, Team USA loses and we dismiss the competition altogether – what a disgraceful display of collective poor sportsmanship.  If you lost a game of golf, would you immediately invalidate your friend’s victory by pointing out some imperfection on the course?

But that’s the beauty of international competitions – you find out exactly where you are.  And Team USA is a good, but not world championship team.  Let’s recognize that and congratulate the winners.  (Recall that Japan won the WBC in 2006 – this just in – they are good).  Then, let’s not play this thing halfway.  Players need to be allowed to play through the same nagging injuries they are going to get in April anyway.  You can’t play any sport afraid of being injured.  You can’t compete in fear.  Second, let’s get some real managers and coaches in there.  By real managers and coaches, I mean someone that a major league club would consider hiring if they had an opening today.  In 2006, Buck Martinez ( a great analyst and talk show host on MLB Radio) was the WBC manager after failing in Toronto.  Believe me when I tell you that he didn’t have a conflict when he got the call to manage the team.  In 2009 we had Davey Johnson.  Look, Davey Johnson hasn’t managed in the major leagues since the first Bush Administration.  The game has changed just a bit since then (four new teams, one relocation, 6 divisions, interleague play,the WildCard playoff system, steiroids, and the Red Sox won 2 World Series and the White Sox won 1).  And although he won a World Series in 1986, I really don’t give him that much credit for out-managing John McNamara.  Just like you shouldn’t buy me a round of drinks for beating my son at Connect Four.  Finally, we need to update the Collective Bargaining Agreement and the MLB Franchise Agreement so that if players get hurt, the teams are at least financially protected via their contract insurance policies.

Let’s stop bashing the tournament.  I get it.  It’s not perfect.  You know what?  The MLB playoffs aren’t perfect.  Best of 5 first round after a 162-game season?  World Series being played in the last week of October or into November in places like Denver, Boston, Chicago?  We accept the playoff tournament because we are used to it.  But the best teams build their teams ultimately for the playoffs.  When I get beat at chess, I don’t suggest that it’s silly that the bishops only move diagonally. We need to build a team for this tournament, and an organization for this tournament, just like USA Basketball and we need to get better at baseball.  It’s not the WBC’s fault that American baseball isn’t as good as we thought.   The WBC has done as a great favor to make us realize we’re just not as good as we thought we were – now we can address it.