CLASSIC, OR A MERE CURIOSITY?
Some countries clearly don’t take baseball’s big international tourney all that seriously
The World Baseball Classic was on television in the Toronto Blue Jays clubhouse on Tuesday morning. Korea versus the Netherlands — that old rivalry.
As Tom Stuifbergen, a hefty right-hander, took the mound for the Dutch, a Jays player happened to walk past and look up at the screen.
“Who’s this fat turd?” he said to no one in particular. “Lay off the subs.” Hey, man. Words hurt. But, as the Jays lost 7-1 to Team Canada at Florida Auto Exchange Stadium on Tuesday, in one of the few opportunities for Canada manager Ernie Whitt to gauge his team before they start firing live bullets on Thursday, that exchange underscored one of the oddities of the international baseball tournament: Despite this being the fourth edition of the Classic, it is still something of a weird novelty, large Dutchmen included.
John Gibbons was asked before the game whether it was special to be playing Team Canada, and the Toronto manager answered with a chortle.
“I think it’s kinda cool,” he said, diplomatically, a wide smile on his tanned face. “The fans like it.”
Of his opponents, he said: “They’ve got a good little team over there.”
This is a fair assessment. The Canadian lineup sports a soupcon of major league talent, including Atlanta’s Freddie Freeman, Toronto’s Dalton Pompey, and Justin Morneau, who was a part-timer for the White Sox last season, a decade removed from his MVP year with Minnesota.
But even though Canada is more of a baseball country than several of the 16 nations in the WBC — Australia, Israel and China come to mind — the rest of the roster is a bit of a patchwork affair.
There are pros like Scott Mathieson and Scott Richmond, who now pitch for the Yomiuri Giants (Japan) and the Fubon Guardians (Taiwan).
There are former pros like Pete Orr, who is now a pro scout.
And the team’s most accomplished starter, Ryan Dempster, and most accomplished reliever, Eric Gagne, are both retired — or were both retired.
Poor Dempster hasn’t thrown yet and is being saved for Canada’s WBC opener against the stacked lineup of the Dominican Republic: Robinson Cano, Manny Machado, Adrian Beltre, Nelson Cruz and Jose Bautista, among others. Eeks.
But the Dominican Republic is the rare country that is both loaded with baseball talent and cares enough about the WBC to make sure enough of that talent appears in it. Not for nothing are they the defending champions.
Even Japan, which won the first two versions of the event, will be without most of its major league talent this time, with stars such as Masahiro Tanaka and Yu Darvish taking a pass.
No country, though, is a better example of the strange spot that the WBC holds in the baseball universe than the United States.
The country of the sport’s birth, which is home to the biggest baseball league in the world, has never won a WBC and it doesn’t seem terribly interested in doing so. The United States also has a patchwork lineup — it’s just that they have an awful lot of patches to work with.
The starting rotation is expected to include Tampa’s Chris Archer, and Toronto’s J.A. Happ and Marcus Stroman, which is a fine group of pitchers. But it will not include, for example, Clayton Kershaw, Max Scherzer, Chris Sale or Corey Kluber, which would be a run-for-the-hills terrifying group of pitchers.
The batting order will include stars like Giancarlo Stanton, Nolan Arenado and Buster Posey, but not present will be a series of MVPs: Mike Trout, Kris Bryant, Bryce Harper, Josh Donaldson.
It’s hard to take the event seriously when what should be the marquee country displays such a passing interest in trying to win it.
Hockey has some recent familiarity with holding a made-up international tournament in the pre-season of its biggest pro league, and for all the (deserved) criticisms of the World Cup of Hockey, at least most of the big names agreed to take part. Imagine if Sidney Crosby, Jonathan Toews and Connor McDavid had decided not to play for Canada? (Maybe scratch that last one.) Riots in the streets, I tell you.
In the end, the World Baseball Classic will have some parallels with the World Cup of Hockey in that a small group of countries will care significantly about it and the rest of the world won’t much notice. The Dominican Republic is to baseball as Canada is to hockey.
Does the WBC grow the game internationally? Maybe a little. As even Whitt admitted before Tuesday’s game, a successful Blue Jays team would do — and has done — more to increase interest in baseball among Canadian youth than a good run for Team Canada over the next couple of weeks.
But that’s not to say that the whole thing is a waste of time. It’s spring, and these guys are playing baseball, which is what most of them would have been doing anyway.
“It’s nice, beautiful weather and good, friendly people,” Whitt said on Tuesday, which as an endorsement doesn’t suggest the most intense of competitions.
“They are a great group of guys. The camaraderie is amazing. We have one purpose: To come together as a group and represent our country the best we can.”
For Canada in the World Baseball Classic, that will probably have to do.