America first? Not when it's in Selig's fake tournament

In March of 2013, playing for his country rather than his team, Mark Teixeira tore his wrist like a sheet of typing paper. Tex was competing in the World Baseball Classic, one of former commissioner Bud Selig's great enduring failures. (Bud's plan to put logos for Spider-Man 2 on the bases was never implemented.) That year, Tex played in 15 Yankee games, batting .151. Our regular 1B became Lyle Overbay. We finished third in the AL East, 12 games behind Boston. And good-hearted, patriotic Tex, at age 33, would never be the same. (In 2014, he hit .216.) Now, at age 36 - three years younger than Carlos Beltran - he's out of baseball.

Would Tex have shredded his wrist during a regular, lazy, lollygagging, stoner spring training, while banging around Tampa with Hulk Hogan and Bubba the Love Sponge? We'll never know. He went off to fight for Selig's fraudulently nationalistic marketing scheme, and now he's a case study in how to wreck a Hall of Fame career - and also one of the many gifts Selig gave New York City in the commissioner's quest to make his family's Milwaukee Brewers the norm for MLB franchises.

Yesterday, Masahiro Tanaka decided not to pitch for Japan in Selig's World Cup, which starts March 5. Thank God! As Japan's ace, Tanaka's fragile, partially-torn elbow would have carried the weight of national pride, when sold for profit. You can imagine him throwing seven innings in a meaningless March contest, walking off the mound with a throbbing elbow, and his 2017 season - along with the opt-clause next winter, which will cement his family's finances forever - swirling down the drain.

We now have one Yankee committed to the games. Dellin Betances will pitch for the Dominican Republic, unless - as I hope - Cashman talks him out of it in the upcoming arbitration hearings. Fingers crossed. We've given our share. Talk about fake news? This is a fake tournament. Why should we subject any of our key players to a 15-hour plane ride to South Korea - part of the plan - or to a super-heated spring schedule drawn up to stoke foreign profits?

By the way, none of the fabled Four Horsemen of the Redsock Apocalypse - Sale, Price, Porcello and Whazzisname - plan to pitch in the World Cup. They'll stay home and sit in the spa. Right now, the Redsock '17 Hall of Fame Superteam of Destiny (TM) will send Hanley Ramirez and Xander Bogaertes, though here's an alternative fact: Pablo Sanduval - aka Slenderman - is said to be pondering such a move.

We should pull the plug on this event. We gave our country Mark Teixeira. Does anybody even remember who won the thing in 2013? Or the last time it was held? No more. Nothing. Nada. Yankees, go home.