The injury suffered by Edwin Diaz has brought out the World Baseball Classic haters in full force trying to point out why the tournament should not be played and using the Edwin Diaz injury as proof positive that MLB teams should prohibit their stars from playing in the WBC. The injury sustained by the Mets closer is a really unfortunate freak accident and I won't bother arguing why the injury is not the fault of the World Baseball Classic. I won't bother to answer the Keith Olbermanns or the Barstool Sports folks. They will never change their minds anyway about the WBC and that's okay. I want to focus instead on why this tournament matters and why Baseball needs it to become a truly global phenomenon.
The World Baseball Classic today serves as the only real opportunity that MLB players have to truly represent their respective nations, or those of their ancestors. MLB players cannot currently compete in the Olympics or in Premier 12 for example. Truth be told, baseball had been lagging behind in this respect for some time when the WBC was born in 2006. By that time, there were players from some two dozen nations who had played big league ball over the years and sport had gone truly international. It was time to have a true World Series.
Like soccer's World Cup, the event began as a smaller affair with many stars missing, but many also present. The naysayers were immediately proven wrong that the US could simply waltz to victory. The early exit of the Americans showed that this no waltz and that the tournament needed to be taken seriously to win, as the Americans eventually did in 2017. The event was also received with immediate enthusiasm by the powerhouses of Asia and Latin America who were eager to show that they were the masters of pelota or yakyu, or yagu or bang qiu. Emerging national programs, looking to show their growth over the years also took this event as a chance to demonstrate how far they have come. The two semifinal appearances of the Netherlands and strong records by Italy and Mexico show this.
The event is more than just determining which is the supreme baseball nation. It is a chance to bring peoples of different cultures, religions and ways of appreciating the game together. The WBC, on both occasions where I had the privilege to watch games live for myself, was a chance to enjoy games flanked by people of different countries, all dressed I'm their national colors and all prouder than ever of who they are. The WBC gave me the privilege to take in a game the Canadian way, the American way, the Dominican way, the Puerto Rican way, and so on. On TV, it was my first exposure to the way the game is enjoyed in Asia, and today I still happily wake up early each morning to take in some Taiwanese or Korean baseball, even if I've never visited either country. I do intend to though and the same goes for Japan.
Apart from cultural enrichment for those of us in North America though, the WBC allowed baseball to insert itself into the national fabric of nations where it otherwise wouldn't have. Take Israel for example. Before 2012, when Israel first attempted to qualify, there was exactly one decent field, a failed attempt at a pro league, and maybe a few hundred hardened baseball fans. A decade later, after two appearances in the main tournament and a run to the Olympic Games in 2021, Israel has seen enrollment in baseball programs skyrocket and multiple new fields have either been built or are in the process of being built. The IDF now recognizes baseball as a sufficiently legitimate sport such that elite baseball players can be recognized as elite athletes and therefore receive the needful accommodations during their mandatory military service time. As further good news, Israel was named the host of the 2025 European Baseball Championships, a major accomplishment for a country that rarely gets to host international sporting events, especially in a sport that was so recently a non-entity there.
Yes, you would be correct in pointing out that Team Israel is made up mostly of Jewish American professionals, and opponents of the WBC often bring up the lax eligibility requirements as further proof of the ilegitimacy of the tournament. Fair enough, the rules will probably need to be tightened with time but we had to start from somewhere. For there to Moshe This and Ofir That on Team Israel, there first needed to be Ryan Lavarnway and Josh Zeid. Because kids in Israel saw them and others like Dean Kremer who speaks fluent Hebrew and spent a good amount of his childhood in Israel, one day there will be a Dror So And So on some MLB team. Because an Orthodox Jewish kid from Long Island called Jacob Steinmetz struck out Manny Machado, there will be a Yaakov (Kobi) So And So who'll grow up wanting to be like Jacob Steinmetz in Israel. It had to start with something. Now, the foundation is built, and Alon Leichmann, who grew up in a Kibbutz, can call himself a coach on a major league staff. Baseball fields are springing up in Israel the desert is blooming, and Israelis and Jews can attend a major international sporting event in the WBC and not have to hide that they're Israeli or Jewish.
Apart from providing a model for baseball growth in countries, the WBC also allows us to dream a little, as this year's Czech squad reminds us. In what other baseball competition would firefighters, high school teachers and doctors share a field like the Tokyo Dome with superstars like Shohei Ohtani as equals? And where else will you see someone who works as an electrical technician for a utility company K the great Shohei? I've only ever seen such a thing at the WBC. Where else will these men who work day jobs like you and me and somehow find time to chase a dream get to actually live it in front of tens of thousands of screaming fans.
I am personally inspired by the Czech squad and everything they were able to do even with limited resources and limited time to train. I know many others are too. They are inspired too. They certainly played like it. They have ensured a return ticket for 2026 and gave sprinted efforts against the two traditional powers of the far east in Japan and Korea. Because of them, and because they had this platform, baseball is enjoying coverage in their home country that it otherwise never would have.
The WBC is not perfect and timing it in the middle of spring training is appreciably inconvenient for MLB clubs, but the same holds true NPB and KBO clubs, and yet owners and fan bases alike are supportive of their players taking part because of what it means to wear your flag on your jersey. And if your flag is not the country of your birth but instead that of your family heritage, like say newly minted Japanese national hero Lars Nootbaar, or a country to whom you feel indebted to for taking you in, like Randy Arozarena, that's OK too. That also matters deeply to these players.
The WBC isn't perfect, and no it has not yet reached the heights of the FIFA World Cup, but the WBC is where the World Cup would have been in the 1950's when it was not yet the global sensation that it is today. Good things take time. Good things face skepticism. Good things slowly pay their dividends. The game is growing, new countries are getting to test their mettle with the best and more than a million fans witnessed the superstars like Trout and Ohtani battle it out with other stars and other players who would otherwise never have gotten to share a field with these stars. Fans who were not among the over a million that saw the group stage in person saw it by the millions on TV. Entire countries are tuning in in record numbers that dwarf even Super Bowl ratings.
I think the WBC is worth it. Those who don't see the value in it can skip playing in it, not watch it etc. There's no harm in that, but they cannot argue in good faith that the event is meaningless and that it does nothing for the game. I also don't dispute that MLB truly is the greatest league in the world, but there is also a whole wonderful world of baseball outside of North America. Stars in NPB and KBO are legitimate talents regardless of whether they make the move to America and Czech electrical technicians can retire the greatest player in our game today. Most importantly though, the WBC is the purest expression of playing for the name on the front of the jersey instead of the name on the back. No, national pride does not pay hundred million dollar salaries but it is an inalienable part of who we are. And national pride can mean pride in the country of your birth but also the "land where your grandmothers got laid" as one supposedly respectable pundit chose to put it. It can even mean wearing three thousand years of civilized history and survival against the odds on your jersey. There truly is nothing bigger you can play for.
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