{"id":8,"date":"2006-03-12T23:09:09","date_gmt":"2006-03-13T03:09:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/kirkman\/2006\/03\/12\/world-baseball-classic-gets-better-an"},"modified":"2006-03-12T23:09:09","modified_gmt":"2006-03-13T03:09:09","slug":"world-baseball-classic-gets-better-and-better","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/kirkman\/2006\/03\/12\/world-baseball-classic-gets-better-and-better\/","title":{"rendered":"World Baseball Classic gets better and better"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

I was glad to see Eric Neels’ piece<\/a> on ESPN.com about the momentum the WBC seems to be gaining.
\nI agree.  It is hard not to get sucked in if you are a baseball fan.
\nRight now Puerto Rico is ahead of the Dominican Republic 7-1 in the
\n8th.  Cuba beat Venezuela today 7-1.  The US beat Japan 4-3
\nin the bottom in the ninth with a disputed call.
\nThis is good stuff.
\nThe only problem is the disconnect between how seriously the non-US
\npublic takes this kind of tournament versus fans in the US.  For a
\ncountry where baseball is supposedly up there with apple pie and
\nmotherhood, and a great baseball showdown has been teed up for the US
\npublic to see every day for a couple of weeks, it is amazing how few
\npeople I seem to talk to, who on any other normal baseball season day
\nwould get rabid about the umpire’s call on a sixth pitch in the 3rd
\ninning on a minor league game, are not paying attention to the WBC.
\nI hope that there are indeed US fans somewhere who watching this first
\nWBC.  Because what they will see is that there are a number of
\nplaces in the world where baseball, and national pride, are taken very
\nseriously.<\/p>\n

But if not, baseball will still live on, and very strongly, in the
\nnorthern Latin American countries and Eastern Asia.  It is ironic
\nthat a tournament organized by a US-based sports league might end up
\ndoing a better job stoking the fire of fans in Korea, Puerto Rico,
\nMexico, the Dominican Republic, Japan, Venezuela and Cuba than in its
\nown country.<\/p>\n

Which is certainly good for baseball globally.  But as in all
\nthings global these days, there is a strange, glassy eyed,
\nnon-interactive and pathetic glaze to the average US citizen’s view of
\nthe world.  Apathy is too much in vogue these days, and there is
\ncertainly a chasm between what people think and what people do. 
\nThere are too many parallels between the extent to which US citizens
\noppose the Iraq war and do not say anything, and how much they love
\nbaseball, yet are not interested in how their baseball squad does on
\nthe world stage.<\/p>\n

I said this in an earlier post, but kudos to Bud Selig to have pulled
\nthe World Baseball Classic off.  This has the potential to be a
\ngreat tradition for years to come. <\/p>\n

It would be nice if the US public came along for the ride, and really got into it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was glad to see Eric Neels’ piece on ESPN.com about the momentum the WBC seems to be gaining. I agree.  It is hard not to get sucked in if you are a baseball fan. Right now Puerto Rico is ahead of the Dominican Republic 7-1 in the 8th.  Cuba beat Venezuela today 7-1.  The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":101,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[175],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-baseball"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/kirkman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/kirkman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/kirkman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/kirkman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/101"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/kirkman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/kirkman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/kirkman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/kirkman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/kirkman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}