The Journal

Issue date: 3/23/06 Section: Sports

Grant Bissell

The inaugural World Baseball Classic has come and gone. What many Americans don't know is that Japan beat Cuba in the championship game March 20. Why don't Americans know this? Because few people in the United States seem to care about international competition, athletes included.

Team USA, one of the tournament's favorites, fielded a roster chock full of perennial all-stars and still couldn't manage to make it past the second round, even when the umpires blatantly cheated in the U.S.'s favor in a game against Mexico (calling an obvious homerun a ground-rule double). The team's lack-luster performance followed in the footsteps of the 2004 men's Olympic basketball team and the 2006 men's Olympic hockey team, both of which failed to meet their expectations.

The players seemed to approach each game as if it was a regular season contest in late April rather than a worldwide tournament that won't happen again until 2009. The talent was there. What the team lacked was heart. They should have learned from teams like Japan, Cuba, the Dominican Republic and Korea who played each game with a sense of national pride that team USA seemed to forget when they left the locker room.

The American media, too, treated the WBC as some sort of anomaly that had no place in the sports world. A casual mention here and there was the only recognition the tournament seemed to get unless a sports analyst was complaining about the horrible timing of the event or the fact that the U.S. attempted to ban Cuba from competing.

I'm not saying the WBC was flawless. Far from it. Timing, officiating, rules and format are all issues that Commissioner Bud Selig and his associates will try to improve in the coming months. What I am saying is that this tournament deserved the attention and respect from the U. S. that it garnered throughout the rest of the baseball world.

We invented the game for crying out loud.

Shouldn't we treat international baseball, where flags come before pennants, as equally important? Or is the fact that other countries have adopted our game, and actually gotten good at it, too much for the average American to stomach?

As an enthusiastic baseball fan from the "Best Sports Town in America," I was thrilled to learn the WBC was going to take place. How could I complain about the opportunity to watch the best players in the world compete a full month before the Major League Baseball season got underway? What I didn't realize is that I would be one of the few in this country that would care at all.

There was a time when many American sports teams were the very best in the world. Americans now have to accept the fact that other countries are on a competitive level with our teams and we should open our eyes to the world of international competition, rather than focusing only on domestic games.

Who doesn't want to be as enthusiastic as the drum-beating Caribbeans or the ganja-smoking Dutch when it comes to playing another country? Count me in.


Grant Bissell, a senior broadcast journalism major, is a staff writer for The Journal.

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