Nope. Be calm.
Aaron Judge has dropped a truth bomb on America.
He said aloud what everybody is thinking:
Suddenly, the World Baseball Classic matters.
It wasn't always this way. Remember when nobody cared? The WBC was a fart, a bridge to March Madness, a distraction to the critical questions: do we go with Jake Bird or Angel Chivilli? When we talked about the WBC, we discussed our major fears: A tweaked gonad or overworked pitch count. The WBC mattered even less than spring games, which mattered nothing at all.
And yet... this week, we saw veteran stars dance like teenyboppers. We saw old-timers leap dugout railings, as if the world suddenly encountered the intersection of human nature with pro sports.
You cannot buy hunger.
And nobody worth $300 million ever truly sweats a loss, as long as the next bank transfer pings on time.
Yesterday's words from the Captain of Team America - and, cough, the Yankees - should not affect Judge's standing. Truth is truth. The WBC is more appealing, more genuine, more memorable, than anything we'll see until maybe mid-September, when the pennant race means life and death (in that figurative way.) There are other reasons...
1. The WBC lets fans root for players we otherwise miss, or worse, hate. We can close our eyes and imagine Bryce Harper as a Yankee (because he shoulda been one, dammit.) And Roman Anthony. And Gunner Henderson. Fuck, the whole damn team should be Yankees. Oh, well..
2. It raises an undercurrent of geopolitical realities. You felt it in USA v Canada, and USA v Mexico. We would have definitely felt it in a game against Cuba, or the Netherlands (winner takes Greenland!) Now... USA v Venezuela. Yikes. In a strange way, this game does matter.
3. Soon, MLB and YES will launch their nightly fodder. And with nothing better to do, I will watch. The Yankees have been a thread running throughout my life. No matter how pissed I get at them, there is always a Cam Schlittler or Oswaldo Cabrera. (Wait. Anybody got a bead on Osvaldo Bido?)
The WBC reminds MLB stars what it's like to be 12-year-olds, to play for family and the universe, and live on the edge. In the WBC, each day is a month, and each month is a lifetime.
Judge just spake the truth. Good for him. We cannot buy hunger. Why did anybody ever think otherwise?
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3 comments:
You know--contradicting comments I've made the past few weeks--I've come around to the idea that it's the WBC that matters, and the MLB season doesn't. Certainly not for Yankees fans. Yes, I'll be watching to see what Judge and Cam and Oswaldo (if they let the guy play) and Rice can do. But the rest of them...yeah, not really interesting, not especially likable.
Maybe they'll prove me wrong like the WBC proved me wrong. But I have my doubts.
Judge is a great player. I totally disagree. Maybe he wants to scrap the Series because the Yankees cannot win one. Let's not forget the dropped fly ball vs. the Dodgers.
I always liked the WBC, despite a hate-love relationship with the implicit national/political undertones it and any international sporting tournament inevitably raise. It's near enough the only thing Bud Selig did that I find to be a worthy addition to the game. (Full disclosure: I also found using the All Star Game to decide World Series advantage acceptable, if unnecessary. But they don't do that anymore, do they?)
But it also reveals a really bratty characteristic of a lot of fans: they're only interested if their team (or country) wins. When the US wins it or looks set to win it, suddenly there is interest and "now it matters". When the US squad falls on its face and is eliminated early, it's "stupid idea", "baseball will never be FIFA", "no one cares". I'm not trying to criticise anyone on this site, more the general vibes I've heard for many years whenever the WBC comes around.
Of course it's logical that fair weather fan interest exists, there's nothing wrong with that. Obviously if "your" team does well and maybe wins it all, it catches your interest far more than when they're out of it. I just object to the sour grapes pretence that the competition itself is stupid just because one's own rooting interest doesn't do well.
But as I write this, I have to wonder if my own declining interest in MLB is due to my distaste with what that organisation has become and what it's done to a beautiful game, or whether I just have sour grapes because the Yankees are so depressingly lousy. I THINK it's mostly the former, but it would be pretty dishonest to pretend that the latter was not also relevant.
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