One of the most delicious things about baseball is its poetic timing. When Venezuela clinched its spot in the World Baseball Classic final against the United States, it was hard not to chuckle in disbelief, before punctuating the moment with a matching four-letter expletive.
It was the most baseball thing in history for Venezuela to beat Team USA at its own game. It’s hard to deny that I personally relished watching the self-serious prep-school-looking ballplayers on my side lose to a team representing a country our government invaded just three months ago. After extra-judiciously imposing itself by kidnapping Venezuela’s president Nicolás Maduro, it feels just right that the United States would lose at a game it has wielded as soft power for nearly a century to that very country.
Of course, the players and coaches that make up Team USA are not at fault for the foreign policy decisions of the Trump administration. But their dull, shallow nationalism certainly made them more unlikable.
When Team USA was first being assembled, it was hard not to be ecstatic. Last season’s Cy Young Award winners: the Pirates’ Paul Skenes and the Tigers’ Tarik Skubal, were going to pitch on the same roster as sluggers like the Yankees’ Aaron Judge, the Phillies’ Bryce Harper and Kyle Schwarber and the Royals’ Bobby Witt Jr., all of whom are All-Stars. Many commentators compared this Team USA to the “Dream Team” from the 1992 Olympics, composed of the greatest basketball talent. If only this Team USA had a fraction of the flair that the Dream Team wielded.
Whereas players for nearly every other competing country strutted their stuff after launching a home run, or celebrated their country’s culture as they celebrated victories, the players from the United States simply…saluted. Yawn. The whole world can see how much fun Team Italy had with their home run espressos, for example. Venezuelan outfielder Wilyer Abreu’s energetic home run trot was infectious. Would it have killed Judge to wear a Stetson or an Uncle Sam costume?
Patriotism is a complicated thing, but ultimately, it is a net good. I would hope that you come from a country you can be proud of. What Team USA did during the WBC was hardly patriotic; it was borderline pornographic. The broadcast mentioned that Skenes briefly attended the Air Force Academy but ultimately didn’t serve. Okay. Should the broadcasters have celebrated what was essentially lip service as if it were actual military service? The answer is rhetorical, and it also isn’t “yes.”
Why on Earth was Robert J. O’Neill, a SEAL Team Six member on the mission to kill Osama Bin Laden, giving the United States baseball team a pep talk? Why did Aaron Judge talk about “sacrifice” and being “in the trenches” with his teammates in a speech that I listen to every night as a sleep aid? Why was Mariners’ catcher Cal Raleigh wearing a shirt that said “Front Toward Enemy” while explaining why he had a “responsibility” to his team not to shake fellow Mariner Randy Arozarena’s hand in a game against Mexico?
Pretending that baseball, the “children’s game,” is akin to war, and that ballplayers are akin to soldiers, is laughable, mostly because it’s not true. Baseball is meant to be joyous and played with heart, and like all other team sports, it is a tool for community building. War is not. War breaks communities apart, both at home and abroad. What Judge and manager Mark DeRosa did as leaders of this team was fetishize dominance rather than celebrate the opportunity to play this nation’s pastime on a massive global stage. It was emblematic, unfortunately, of the America that we live in, which views its competition as the enemy and the enemy as something that needs to be destroyed, rather than understood.
The finale of the last World Baseball Classic ended in a faceoff between the greatest American ballplayer, Los Angeles Angels outfielder Mike Trout, and the greatest Japanese ballplayer, then-Angels two-way player Shohei Ohtani. In hindsight, it’s hard not to see that matchup as baseball’s past versus its future with Trout’s stardom waning by 2023, while Ohtani’s was emerging. It’s hard to pretend that Team USA’s nationalism is unrelated to its defeat three years ago. I can only hope that Venezuela’s victory over Judge and company taught Team USA what it really means to be a winning team.