Much to learn from WBC
The World Baseball Classic may save the sport from its home country. The Japanese and South Korean teams were a joy to watch in the first Classic three years ago, playing a brand of the game that has eroded in the United States after years of cartoonish sluggers pounding at its foundation. They've been equally impressive this time around, with Japan winning the title 5-3 Monday night after the repeating champs had earlier schooled the Yanks in fundamentals and Korea eliminated Venezuela.
The excuses piled up after the Americans' loss Sunday. This was just one game. The Americans are still in spring training form, whereas players from the Far East play a lot of winter ball. The U.S. roster had a lot of injuries. Some of the best American players sat out to protect their bodies for the major-league season, rather than risk them in this charming, though utterly meaningless, exhibition series.
Concede every point in those qualifiers, and then bow to the finalists. These aren't one-hit wonders, although both of them could happily find a way to win on only one hit. Korea took the gold in Beijing, Japan the 2006 WBC title.
They deserve respect and, even more than that, emulation. For almost two decades, the American game has remained stuck in the era of Jordan Envy, a syndrome that didn't diminish a bit when Michael Jordan himself proved he couldn't hit a minor-league curve.
The early 1990s saw the NBA threaten to supplant MLB permanently in this country's affections. The 1994 strike has long been blamed for imperiling baseball and creating an urgent need for long-ball bombast to lure back the fans. But it didn't act alone. Basketball's golden era helped lead baseball down the road where it tarnished itself.
In 1991, '92 and '93, the NBA produced a Dream Team in Barcelona and a dream team, barely lower case, in Chicago. Baseball's champions in that same span came from Minneapolis and Toronto, on patches of artificial turf rather than fields of dreams.
Many of the stars who later brought baseball back turned out to be faker than the green floor of the Metrodome. The Steroid Era, if it can even be considered a single era, has always been credited with saving the game, and at its most obnoxious, MLB would taunt its critics by saying that attendance and revenue had soared in spite of (read: perhaps because of) the obvious drug use that pushed so many balls out of the park.
The home run got way too much credit for reviving the sport, without much consideration for other critical factors: an influx of Asian and Latin American stars who surely expanded the audience pool, the renaissance of the Yankees and a slew of pretty new parks.
Over in the NBA, a late-90s invasion of international players was hailed as a dramatic improvement, allegedly pulling the game out of a one-on-one, finesse-deficient phase. At the same time, baseball got away from its finer points, hammering the ball, and everyone cheered.
Ichiro Suzuki, not Mark McGwire, should have been the model for a new era in baseball. But small ball seemed like a harder sell. Owners and marketers didn't really believe in their own product. They led with power, even though the typical home run can't compete visually with the crushing violence of football, the soaring dunks of basketball or, as other sports become more mainstream, the dramatics of professional wrestling.
At its best, the sport is elegant and cerebral, like a moving chess match. Two of the greatest moments over the last decade were Derek Jeter's backward toss to the plate against Oakland's Jeremy Giambi and Dave Roberts' history-altering stolen base in the ninth inning of the 2004 ALCS's Game 4. Defense, head games, speed. Sublime.
The WBC finalists played like purists, and it made them unbeatable. The U.S., if allowed to play under their ideal circumstances, might be dominant. But then again, the Americans got to play at home, and the pitch limits imposed on WBC teams may have held back the Asian teams, who tend not to baby their arms the way Americans do. The only thing we know for sure is that the Japanese and Koreans aren't playing for a highlights reel, or to lure an audience away from MTV. They should be baseball's dream team.