Compelling WBC deserves run every 2 years
I am already missing the real March Madness.
One-and-doners and a college game that rarely lives up to its name nowadays? No way. I’m talking about the real craziness. The true tournament. Literal must-see TV loaded with inspiration, failure and pure joy.
Carlos Correa commanding an international stage. Carlos Beltran hitting almost everything in sight. Chanting, singing and screaming; waving signs, streaming flags and cherished plantains.
The World Baseball Classic has become one of the grand ol’ sport’s greatest modern advertisements. The 2017 edition was the finest to date and goes down as the most underrated athletic event of the year — even with record attendance and viewers.
I have no idea why the WBC is played only every four years. I question the sanity of anyone involved with Major League Baseball who’s considered ending a cross-continent battle we love more and more each time it’s played. I’m officially casting my vote for the WBC every two years and wish Minute Maid Park would host a future round.
This year’s WBC was that thrilling, compelling and fascinating. Everything baseball is; everything the game can become.
“Just really amazing,” said Rob Manfred, who’s giving Adam Silver a hard run for the best commissioner in sports. “And best of all, the games on the field have been absolutely unbelievable. … Our play-
ers at their best, combined with a little nationalism, has really been a great thing.”
None of America’s four major pro sports can touch baseball when it comes to international reach and diversity. And if you didn’t feel your heart rate quicken when Correa raced across home plate, pushing Puerto Rico into the championship game, then you probably don’t have a pulse.
Sure, the super-lame, extra-innings rules were straight out of T-ball. Of course, Mike Trout, Kris Bryant, Bryce Harper and Clayton Kershaw should have been wearing red, white and blue. But that’s MLB’s fault, not the WBC’s. And America captured the flag, shutting out the Correa-Beltran connection 8-0 before 33,462 Wednesday in Los Angeles.
I remember waiting for the inaugural WBC to begin in 2006, feeling like one of the only people in the city I then lived in who cared about the international hardball experiment that awaited. Finding it on TV was even more of a personal struggle. Eleven years later, this country is the champ, and MLB is coming off a historic World Series and the strongest WBC yet.
Build on that promise.
International appeal
The NFL is still king, and the NBA could teach baseball a few things about selling and promoting its superstars in the social-media era. But the most international football gets is a random trip to England or Mexico City; basketball’s crosscontinent tournaments rarely hit home. (We don’t do hockey in Houston, so I won’t waste my time.)
Much of the media conversation during this WBC centered on the lack of public passion in today’s MLB and the proud intensity that captured every team from the Dominican Republic to Venezuela. There’s absolute truth there. It’s also hard to imagine about 12,000 modern MLB fans — paying way too much for tickets, food and parking; sitting through another boring in-game pitching change while staring at just-called-up names they don’t know — getting crazy psyched about Oakland versus Tampa Bay in mid-June.
The game we’ve loved for so long lasts from February through October and carries us for 162 regular-season contests. It’s a lot easier to squeeze four years’ worth of national passion into a three-week elimination tournament that pits Japan and Cuba against Australia and the U.S.A.
So the real solution is simple. Let MLB be MLB — always changing, always staying the same — and allow the WBC to remind us how international baseball has become.
Fans go crazy
Correa has never looked stronger. Adam Jones’ leaping center-field catch — with outstretched hands, screaming fans and flying American flags just feet away — will be replayed for years. March Madness? The WBC was crazier. I wish I could watch Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic go at it again.
I wish I didn’t have to wait four more years.
Cut it down to two, MLB. And don’t you dare take the WBC away.