World showcase for baseball

This is an edited excerpt of an editorial that appeared in Thursday’s edition of the Yomiuri Shimbun, Tokyo: World Baseball Classic has just ended, with the Dominican Republic winning the title. The victorious team — along with Puerto Rico, which was beaten in the championship game — impressed us with the strong physical abilities of Caribbean players. Japan aimed to pull off a three-peat, but disappointingly left the tournament in the semifinals. The team failed to make a double steal during a great opportunity, but we cannot fault its aggressive attempt. We applaud the players’ strenuous efforts to advance to the championship round. The gaps in ability among participating countries are much smaller than before, causing even leading nations to fail to perform as expected. The United States, for example, failed to advance to the championship round, while South Korea, the runner-up in the previous WBC, was ousted in the first round. In contrast, European teams performed outstandingly, the Netherlands making it to the semifinals.

Most of the Netherlands’ players came from Curacao, an autonomous state in the Kingdom of the Netherlands that it occupied in the 17th century, but the team’s performance has probably helped the Dutch become more interested in baseball. Run by a company set up by Major League Baseball and the Major League Baseball Players Association, the WBC is now a valuable international event to show the exciting aspects of baseball, as the sport has been dropped from the Olympics.

It is necessary to further develop the WBC as a tournament to decide the world’s top team and improve Japanese baseball to recapture the title.