The U.S. baseball team should be ashamed of itself. Moreover, the Americans that love their national pastime have every right to take offense.
The Americans were completely outclassed in this month’s World Baseball Classic and, for the second time in as many tries, failed to even make the event’s final game. Honestly, the U.S. was lucky to make the semifinals.
What’s that, you say? Baseball is America’s sport, invented and perfected here? The game has been embraced here since its inception? None of that mattered to the prima donna players or selfish club owners who were too concerned with their own self-interest to give the United States the chance to assert its rightful dominance over the rest of the world.
Yes, it’s too early in the year for players to be in mid-season form and yes, we saw a rash of injuries. Did that stop the best players from other countries from competing? Are players like Daisuke Matsuzaka or Ichiro Suzuki from competing for Japan? Absolutely not. Did it keep David Ortiz or Jose Reyes out of the lineup for the Dominican Republic? Nope. Did the risk of injury keep American stars like C.C. Sabathia or Ryan Howard from suiting up in the Red, Gray and Blue? Oops. Yeah, it did.
Hey, Mark Teixiera, would it have helped to have another first baseman when Kevin Youkilis went down? It certainly would have saved Adam Dunn some embarrassment.
Trust me when I say that’s not a shot at Dunn, by the way. You go, big guy, for being willing to play a position you haven’t played in years to help out your country.
It is possible that the United States simply isn’t as talented as it should be. That would illustrate the trend of baseball becoming a sport for the wealthy kids who can afford the nicest equipment, thereby greatly limiting the talent pool. While I’m sure that will affect the talent level of Americans in the future, it’s unlikely to be responsible for the travesty that was the 2009 World Baseball Classic.
Most likely responsible is the lack of national pride felt by the U.S. players. Sadly enough, many Americans probably didn’t see the point of playing if they weren’t getting paid tons of money to do so. Remember in 2004, when the U.S. failed to win Olympic gold in basketball for the first time in decades? Yeah, lots of people were upset about that because the best team didn’t win, perhaps for many of the same reasons. This is worse.
Why? Because the U.S. wasn’t even close to the best team in the tournament, and they should have been. It didn’t make it that far.
Brandon Wright is the sports editor of The Reflector. He can be reached at [email protected].
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