World Baseball Classic Recap
I’ve seen a lot of people torn on the World Baseball Classic and how good it is for the game. I don’t see how you can make an argument that it’s not good for the game itself. You can say it sucks that a player on your Major League team got hurt, but you can’t say it’s bad for the game of baseball.
I’m referring to Edwin Diaz of the New York Mets, who closed out a major upset for his country, Puerto Rico, against a daunting Dominican Republic team. In the midst of an epic celebration with his teammates, Diaz suffered an Injury to his right knee that’s expected to sideline him for all of the 2023 Mets season. Mets fans particularly, now hate the WBC and are very actively bitching about “meaningless baseball”.
It’s a matter of opinion no doubt, but I thought this event was really cool. I’m a big fan of the World Cup so maybe soccer got me here, but how can you be a sports fan and not appreciate a world wide form of competition? The players involved definitely seem to agree. Trea Turner, now of the Philadelphia Phillies, said “it was one of the biggest hits and moments of his career”, speaking of his game changing grand slam in the quarter final round against Venezuela. The 8th inning hit turned a 5-7 deficit into a 9-7 victory for Team USA. Mike Trout, now referred to as Captain America, made several comments that I loved hearing from the 3X MVP. Granted the best player of our generation has yet to experience a playoff win, it appeared that Trout has never had this much fun playing the game of baseball. As a baseball fan what else do you need?!
The tournament ended with a Japan victory over the United States in the final. Obviously a bummer that our country couldn’t pull out a win when we are clearly the kings of baseball, but boy was it electric. The game ended about as story book as it can get. Shohei Ohtani, perhaps the best baseball player to ever walk the earth, certainly the most fun to watch, comes in to pitch the 9th inning for Japan with a 3-2 lead. He allows the first batter to get on, but then forces Mookie Betts to ground into a double play. Two outs, one to go and Captain America, Mike Trout, coming to the plate. Trout and Ohtani are not only teammates on the Angels, they are both polarizing figures in the game. Trout a 3X MVP, and although he has no playoff wins, he has certainly been the face of Major League Baseball for a long time. That is until his Japanese teammate, Shohei Ohtani, stormed into the big leagues and corralled his first MVP trophy in 2021. Now they duel in the World Baseball Classic, representing their countries for all the marbles in the 9th inning with 2 outs. Ohtani gets the best of Trout striking him out on 3 swinging strikes, just the 24th time in 6,174 career at bats for Trout. Ohtani secured the win and showcased his dominance all tournament long with the bat and now on the mound.
The most impressive part of all of this was that 97.4% of TVs in Japan were tuned into this game. Have we ever seen a number like that for anything? In 2020 69% of TVs in the U.S. tuned into the Super Bowl and that’s the closest statistic I can find. That’s still almost a 30% difference! No doubt that this tournament is more important to these other countries, but if you ask me, that doesn’t take away how cool it is and how massive this is to grow the game of baseball world wide!
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