The Diamond Fan

Japan defeated Team USA tonight in the World Baseball Classic, 9-4, knocking the US out of the tournament and setting up a showdown with Asian rival Korea for the WBC championship.  The remarkable thing about this is that is was not at all a surprise.

Japan won the last WBC.  Korea won the gold medal at the Beijing Olympic Games in 2008.  The US teams, whether they feature Major League players or not, generally have not fared well in international competition for years.  Simply put, despite the fact that we shower elite players with obscene salaries, the United States no longer produces the best baseball players in the world.

Need more proof.  Major League rosters are already over 1/3 foreign born. In the minor leagues, the figure is close to 50%. MLB is promoting the World Baseball Classic as a way to grow the sport internationally.  That’s all well and good, but if the baseball powers that be want the greatest sport in the world to continue to flourish, they had better figure out a way to revitalize it in the country of its birth.

Right now the best inner city athletes play basketball.  In rural areas and smaller cities, the sport of choice is likely to be football, followed by basketball, with baseball (maybe) a distant third.  In football and basketball, the good athletes at least get to play before large and enthusiastic crowds during their best amateur years in high school and college.  If they play baseball, they will play most of their games before friends and family and very few others.  The top players the US does produce tend to be one dimensional, slug-the-ball-out-of-the-park type of player, playing to pad their stats instead of helping the team win. The US ballplayers could learn a lot by just watching the team play of the Japanese or Koreans, or even the intensity and swagger of the Cubans or the athleticism of the Dominicans or Venezuelans.

Baseball is not America’s game any more, it is the world’s game.  That’s a good thing, but the reason this came to pass is nto so good.  Because in the country of its birth, baseball is now primarily a business, one largely living on past glories.  In the rest of the world it is still a sport.