I'm baaack!!! ...sort of.
I'm still trying to catch-up with my work that piled up over the past two weeks so I'm not 100% into Blogging yet. However, I was so upset by the USA performance in the "World Baseball Classic" that I wanted to share this "Opinion" with you.
THE INTERNATIONAL PASTIME
Friday, March 24, 2006
David Sarasohn
Friday, March 24, 2006
David Sarasohn
This week, there's the usual gleaming sun in the skies over Florida and Arizona -- at least compared with the March skies over some other places -- but there's a new shadow over the Grapefruit and Cactus leagues.
There's a little less spring in spring training.
For a multitude of Marches, baseball fans could look to the south, and whatever delusions they cherished about the prospects of their own team -- Happy April Fool's Day, Cubs fans -- they could at least feel confident that one of the squads they surveyed in spring was the best baseball team in the world.
Now, it's hard to be sure of that -- unless you regularly check out the Japanese Pacific League.
This beanball of reality struck Americans earlier this week, when the first World Baseball Classic was won by Japan, beating Cuba 10-6. Japan and Cuba reached the final game by defeating the Dominican Republic and South Korea, two other teams that don't think every baseball game has to begin with "The Star-Spangled Banner."
Ken Burns will not be making an eight-part documentary about this.
This was not a U.S. Olympic team of college ballplayers, arriving with a ready-made excuse. This was a team of top major league players, including the left side of the New York Yankees infield, two players with the annual income of a Cuban province.
At least we beat South Africa, with its proud baseball history going back to, maybe, last October.
Admittedly, the U.S. team was missing some of the top Americans, such as Barry Bonds. Of course, using Barry Bonds in international competition might violate the chemical weapons treaty.
This outcome was not heartening for a country whose baseball season ends in what it likes to call the World Series -- a competition now in danger of being renamed the United States Plus Toronto Series. Considering that the Fall Classic is the goal at the other end of spring training, you could see how Florida and Arizona might fall prey to March Malaise.
The United States likes to think of itself as the world's baseball superpower, and its baseball heft and national status are intermingled; George W. Bush just agreed to continue the century-old tradition of the president throwing out a first ball. He's doing it for the Cincinnati Reds; you'd hate to think he might have to do it for the Yomiuri Giants.
But not only did the United States fail to display international dominance, it can't even claim supremacy in North America. In the classic, it lost to both Canada and Mexico. Not only are we not world champions, we're third in the Nafta standings.
And the champion is not even the Dominican Republic, whose team was thick with U.S. major leaguers, but Japan, which had only two.
As Robert Whiting explained in his book on Japanese baseball, "You Gotta Have Wa."
Say wa?
Wa, wrote Whiting, literally means a kind of peace, but really conveys an immersion of the individual into something larger than himself. And while U.S. baseball players may be full of Creatine, human growth hormone and injected testosterone, they seem to be low on wa.
When Ichiro Suzuki of the Seattle Mariners -- who rescued something for American baseball by being both a major league all-star and a world champion -- said before the semifinal game that he wanted to beat South Korea so badly it wouldn't want to play Japan again for 30 years, it did seem a little, well, pre-war.
But nobody could say it was pre-wa.
That kind of feeling might explain why stadiums were full of dancing and chanting Japanese, Dominicans, Koreans and Mexicans, but generally relaxed Americans -- as well as explaining why the championship turned out the way it did.
Of course, it still doesn't explain how the U.S. team lost to Canada.
For the rest of spring training, baseball managers and players will answer questions about going all the way, meaning one day hoisting in their stadium a banner reading, "2006 World Champions."
But maybe, just to be technically accurate, whoever wins the World Series maybe should play the winner of the Wa Series.
There's a little less spring in spring training.
For a multitude of Marches, baseball fans could look to the south, and whatever delusions they cherished about the prospects of their own team -- Happy April Fool's Day, Cubs fans -- they could at least feel confident that one of the squads they surveyed in spring was the best baseball team in the world.
Now, it's hard to be sure of that -- unless you regularly check out the Japanese Pacific League.
This beanball of reality struck Americans earlier this week, when the first World Baseball Classic was won by Japan, beating Cuba 10-6. Japan and Cuba reached the final game by defeating the Dominican Republic and South Korea, two other teams that don't think every baseball game has to begin with "The Star-Spangled Banner."
Ken Burns will not be making an eight-part documentary about this.
This was not a U.S. Olympic team of college ballplayers, arriving with a ready-made excuse. This was a team of top major league players, including the left side of the New York Yankees infield, two players with the annual income of a Cuban province.
At least we beat South Africa, with its proud baseball history going back to, maybe, last October.
Admittedly, the U.S. team was missing some of the top Americans, such as Barry Bonds. Of course, using Barry Bonds in international competition might violate the chemical weapons treaty.
This outcome was not heartening for a country whose baseball season ends in what it likes to call the World Series -- a competition now in danger of being renamed the United States Plus Toronto Series. Considering that the Fall Classic is the goal at the other end of spring training, you could see how Florida and Arizona might fall prey to March Malaise.
The United States likes to think of itself as the world's baseball superpower, and its baseball heft and national status are intermingled; George W. Bush just agreed to continue the century-old tradition of the president throwing out a first ball. He's doing it for the Cincinnati Reds; you'd hate to think he might have to do it for the Yomiuri Giants.
But not only did the United States fail to display international dominance, it can't even claim supremacy in North America. In the classic, it lost to both Canada and Mexico. Not only are we not world champions, we're third in the Nafta standings.
And the champion is not even the Dominican Republic, whose team was thick with U.S. major leaguers, but Japan, which had only two.
As Robert Whiting explained in his book on Japanese baseball, "You Gotta Have Wa."
Say wa?
Wa, wrote Whiting, literally means a kind of peace, but really conveys an immersion of the individual into something larger than himself. And while U.S. baseball players may be full of Creatine, human growth hormone and injected testosterone, they seem to be low on wa.
When Ichiro Suzuki of the Seattle Mariners -- who rescued something for American baseball by being both a major league all-star and a world champion -- said before the semifinal game that he wanted to beat South Korea so badly it wouldn't want to play Japan again for 30 years, it did seem a little, well, pre-war.
But nobody could say it was pre-wa.
That kind of feeling might explain why stadiums were full of dancing and chanting Japanese, Dominicans, Koreans and Mexicans, but generally relaxed Americans -- as well as explaining why the championship turned out the way it did.
Of course, it still doesn't explain how the U.S. team lost to Canada.
For the rest of spring training, baseball managers and players will answer questions about going all the way, meaning one day hoisting in their stadium a banner reading, "2006 World Champions."
But maybe, just to be technically accurate, whoever wins the World Series maybe should play the winner of the Wa Series.
David Sarasohn, associate editor, can be reached at 503-221-8523 or davidsarasohn@news.oregonian.com.
posted by Michael at
8:46:00 AM
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