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.<\/p>\n
It was the most baseball thing in history for Venezuela to beat Team USA at its own game. It\u2019s 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\u2019s president Nicol\u00e1s Maduro<\/a>, 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. <\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n When Team USA was first being assembled, it was hard not to be ecstatic. Last season\u2019s Cy Young Award winners: the Pirates\u2019 Paul Skenes and the Tigers\u2019 Tarik Skubal, were going to pitch on the same roster as sluggers like the Yankees\u2019 Aaron Judge, the Phillies\u2019 Bryce Harper and Kyle Schwarber and the Royals\u2019 Bobby Witt Jr., all of whom are All-Stars. Many commentators compared this Team USA to the \u201cDream Team\u201d 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.<\/p>\n Whereas players for nearly every other competing country strutted their stuff<\/a> after launching a home run, or celebrated their country\u2019s culture as they celebrated victories, the players from the United States simply\u2026saluted. Yawn. The whole world can see how much fun Team Italy had with their home run espressos<\/a>, for example. Venezuelan outfielder Wilyer Abreu\u2019s energetic home run trot was infectious. Would it have killed Judge to wear a Stetson or an Uncle Sam costume?<\/p>\n 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\u2019t serve<\/a>. 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\u2019t \u201cyes.\u201d<\/p>\n Why on Earth was Robert J. O\u2019Neill, a SEAL Team Six member on the mission to kill Osama Bin Laden, giving the United States baseball team a pep talk<\/a>? Why did Aaron Judge talk<\/a> about \u201csacrifice\u201d and being \u201cin the trenches\u201d with his teammates in a speech that I listen to every night as a sleep aid? Why was Mariners\u2019 catcher Cal Raleigh wearing a shirt that said \u201cFront Toward Enemy\u201d while explaining why he had a \u201cresponsibility\u201d to his team not to shake fellow Mariner Randy Arozarena\u2019s hand in a game against Mexico<\/a>?<\/p>\n Pretending that baseball, the \u201cchildren\u2019s game,\u201d is akin to war, and that ballplayers are akin to soldiers, is laughable, mostly because it\u2019s 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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n 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\u2019s hard not to see that matchup as baseball\u2019s past versus its future with Trout\u2019s stardom waning by 2023, while Ohtani\u2019s was emerging. It\u2019s hard to pretend that Team USA\u2019s nationalism is unrelated to its defeat three years ago. I can only hope that Venezuela\u2019s victory over Judge and company taught Team USA what it really means to be a winning team.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One of the most delicious things about baseball is its poetic timing. When Venezuela clinched its spot in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":533326,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[4260,74179,42124,1558,12949,7845,1993,93659,12,83286,239583,6801,5528,13090,178466,26,105614,363,18231,26686,10000,8894,9886,12943,237507,25696,239584,3956,99,4706,42270,5461,21,25,24,18232,226972,61864,72364,12404],"class_list":["post-533325","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-aaron-judge","tag-air-force-academy","tag-angels","tag-baseball","tag-bobby-witt-jr","tag-bryce-harper","tag-cal-raleigh","tag-cy-young-award","tag-donald-trump","tag-dream-team","tag-espresso","tag-italy","tag-kyle-schwarber","tag-major-league-baseball","tag-mark-derosa","tag-mexico","tag-mike-trout","tag-mlb","tag-nicolas-maduro","tag-osama-bin-laden","tag-paul-skenes","tag-phillies","tag-pirates","tag-randy-arozarena","tag-robert-j-oneill","tag-royals","tag-seal-team-six","tag-shohei-ohtani","tag-sports","tag-tarik-skubal","tag-team-usa","tag-tigers","tag-united-states","tag-us","tag-usa","tag-venezuela","tag-wbc","tag-wilyer-abreu","tag-world-baseball-classic","tag-yankees"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/533325","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=533325"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/533325\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/533326"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=533325"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=533325"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=533325"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}