The World Baseball Classic is Awesome

By: Brock Vierra

Thank you, World Baseball classic. Like most boys in America, my youth was drastically changed by my first athletic love…baseball. The days of little league put a hold on me in a way I never felt before and the game became the most important thing in my life. I would play on the weekends, practice during the week and I would try to watch as many games/ highlights as I could. Baseball was life.

As time went on, my love for the game dissipated, and the passion I had for it was replaced with other sports. I am a Yankees fan but a loss in mid-May doesn’t affect me as it once did years ago and quite frankly, I didn’t think I would get it back.

Baseball is old, it’s weird, and it lacks character and characters. Gone are the days of Manny Ramirez high-fiving a fan in the stands and Mariano Rivera walking out to Enter Sandman. Gone are the days of Jose Bautista bat flip in the playoffs and all-out brawls being commonplace. Baseball used to be a man’s game. A game of talking the talk and walking the walk. A game where trucking the catcher was not only legal but celebrated, a game that allowed base runners to take outfielders trying to turn a double play. A game that punished pitchers if their ball dared to touch their teammate. Now, it’s just bad.

Not the play on the field but the expected “behaviors” on it. Players can’t celebrate a home run without the fear of being thrown at, pitchers throw more temper tantrums than strikes, umpires are more concerned with their egos than having a proper strike zone, and don’t get me started on the unwritten rules.

The worst part is that it isn’t a baseball problem but an MLB problem. They’ve been trying to backtrack and reinvent themselves since the fallout that was the Mitchell report but all we have to show for it are owners that refuse to spend a penny, let alone a dollar. Owners are criticized for spending too much money, players are penalized for having personality, and managers who are soft and weak.

Don’t get me started on the atmosphere of ballparks either. Yet, these are not issues in Korea or Mexico and that’s because they don’t have a baseball fanbase that is old in both age and mindset. They have fun atmospheres, bat flips, and exciting games. They do it right.

The World Baseball Classic has been the most fun I’ve had watching baseball in years. Watching nations face off against hated rivals, watching players play their hearts out for their people and for the love of the game takes me back to another time, a better time but there are always old heads like Keith Olbermann who can’t stand to experience something different. Olbermann, a notorious hater of the WBC has made remarks criticizing the tournament. Olbermann in response to injuries sustained by Freddie Freeman and Edwin Diaz (who got hurt celebrating, not playing) stated this “The WBC is a meaningless exhibition series designed to: get YOU to buy another uniform, to hell with the real season, and split up teammates based on where their grandmothers got laid. Call it off. Now.” One, he’s wrong. Two, the racial undertones of stating that playing for your country means little in comparison to playing in a league consisting of American teams except for Toronto is well disturbing and three, he’s an idiot. It’s not an exhibition, that’s what spring training is. You know, the MLB preseason that is currently happening where no one wins anything. The same spring training that Tony Gonsolin, Brandon Nimmo, and a whole host of other MLB players were injured participating in, the Spring Training injuries that, unlike the WBC injuries, Olbermann conveniently forgets to report as he goes on his tirade that lacks both a fact-based point and well…logic.

The issue is that Olbermann is not alone in this line of thought and that is why the game is dying. The game has been marred by an old-school way of thinking for too long and the international broadcast numbers reflect this. The world is watching the WBC and MLB should be taking notes. The MLB should not be focusing on the demographic that thinks like Olbermann, they should be focused on the youth. We have young stars in the game and we need to embrace that. Players like Ronald Acuna Jr, Shohei Otani, Mike Trout, Mookie Betts, and Randy Arozarena make this game strong. MLB needs to market to the youth, and make the youth feel like how we did when we watched Ken Griffey Jr, Derek Jeter, David Ortiz, and the stars of the past. We need to make games easily accessible to viewers around the globe and end the blackouts.

The biggest threat to baseball is the MLB because Rob Manfred and the league doesn’t care about baseball. The reason the WBC is so popular is that these teams are competitive, the fans care about the names on the front and back of the jersey and we all have a sense of pride when it comes to the performances on the field. The WBC is what baseball should be and I know when the tournament concludes, we’ll go back to the same old MLB.