For an international baseball tournament to truly reflect participating countries’ best talent has long been a dream of baseball enthusiasts. The Olympics, always played in the middle of the MLB’s summer schedule, have featured some of the best amateur talent on the planet, but the best of the best have always had other things to do when summoned to represent their countries on the world stage.
All of that changed in 2006 when 16 teams, some of them baseball powerhouses and others featuring teenagers more awestruck by the players than representing their country, gathered around the world and competed with passion and skill. The net result: a seemingly endless highlight reel of memories, insatiable enthusiasm for the 2009 edition, and general consensus amongst baseball fans that, despite being only the inaugural event, the World Baseball Classic truly was a classic.
The tournament survived several early obstacles before the first pitch was thrown. Many MLB coaches, executives, and agents were concerned about the possibility of star players being hurt while playing in essentially meaningless “exhibition” games. The WBC was thrown an existential curveball when the American government went through momentary indecision over letting Cuban nationals into the country to play in the semi-finals and championships in California. Under pressure, they relented and the tournament went on. Still, many stars choose not to play, citing obligations to their team, concerns about injuries, and a need to use the month of March to prepare for the regular season.
Many fans dismiss the tournament as silly. However, it remains glaringly obvious to anyone who loves baseball that the WBC is an overwhelming success, producing thrills and rivalries that match and sometimes exceed the drama of professional leagues’ playoff play.
It is tough to argue with 42,000 screaming fans in Toronto. From March 7 to 11, the first-round WBC was held at the Rogers Centre. In the opening and arguably most exciting game, fans watched as Team Canada put the tying run on second in the bottom of the ninth against a star-studded Team USA with perennial all-stars Justin Morneau and Jason Bay due up. While Canada ultimately fell to the US 6-5, the game was eerily similar to the first time the two teams met in the 2006 WBC when Team Canada pulled off baseball’s upset of the century, a captivating 8-6 victory over the Americans in Arizona.
The tournament has turned the age-old baseball proverb “it’s not a sprint, it’s a marathon” on its head, producing massive upsets and crushing disappointment. This sentiment can account for Team USA dropping that fateful game to Canada back in 2006, when its all-star line-up was supposed to effortlessly stroll to the championship. Similarly, the 2009 Dominican Republic’s team humiliated the entire country as it dropped two masterfully played games to the Dutch. Beyond the shocking outcome, the most mystifying part of those games was perhaps learning that the Netherlands had a baseball team.
While the Dominican-Netherlands games may have been thrilling to neutral observers here in Canada, we—or the 10,000 of us who bothered showing up—experienced our own national trauma when arguably the greatest Canadian team ever flopped in a humiliating, indefensible 6-2 loss to Team Italy at home in the Rogers Centre.
The loss bumped the Canadians prematurely from the tournament, preventing a widely anticipated showdown with Venezuela where the winner would have advanced to the next round in Miami. The game was a comparably improbable upset to the Netherlands’ shockers, and it put a damper on what could have been a fabulous baseball showcase in a city not internationally known for baseball. The Italians went on to lose an anticlimactic blowout to a surely relieved Venezuelan team, stealing what would have likely been a wild, fiercely patriotic atmosphere at the Rogers Centre for many Canadian baseball fans.
These bizarre outcomes hurt the quality of the tournament. The WBC would have been better served by a second-round pool featuring the Dominican Republic rather than the Netherlands, especially after the Netherlands bowed quietly in consecutive losses to Venezuela and the USA. If the tournament had taken place over a longer period of time to reflect the participants’ talent rather than obscure factors that create single game upsets, it seems certain that the Dominicans would have advanced and Canada would have gotten its showdown with Venezuela. However, with most players bound by obligations to their professional teams, an alternate format is unlikely to materialize.
Many also argue that the WBC should be played in November, when many players are still close to peak form from the past six months of play, rather than in March, when they are warming up from three months of inactivity. Additionally, while marginally better than in 2006, attendance was abysmal at many of the games. In Toronto, all of the games except for Canada-USA drew fewer than 15,000 fans. In Miami, only 13,000 watched the USA and Puerto Rico play a thrilling sudden elimination game decided in the bottom of the ninth by a walk-off hit by the Americans.
Nonetheless, the tournament has brilliantly served a long-time need in the baseball community, providing invaluable entertainment for devoted fans, and going to great lengths to spur the growth of baseball programs in untapped countries like China, South Africa, and the Netherlands. With the United States advancing to at least the semi-finals this year, baseball fans should be able to bank on a regular four-year cycle of gripping competition that could someday come to rival soccer’s sacred World Cup event.
