It was a tournament as exciting (if not more so) as four regular seasons combined.
“Just when I thought I was out,” a hammy Al Pacino bellows midway through The Godfather, Part III, “they pull me back in!” So too has it been for me with regard to America’s Pastime, baseball. My love for the sport growing up in Washington, D.C., from the Eighties through to the Oughts was something even Peter Angelos — the Castro-curious and currently senile owner of the Baltimore Orioles, who long blocked the District from getting its own baseball franchise back — couldn’t beat out of me. The hapless early years of the Nationals (or the “Natinals,” as we old-school fans say) as a quasi-expansion team couldn’t beat it out of me. And when the Nationals won a wildly improbable World Series in 2019, it was the most triumphant sports moment of my life, even if I celebrated it from afar in a city I had moved to long ago. It felt like vindication, it made the entire clown-car ride the Nationals (and I) took to get to that point not only feel justified, but required, as part of the great story every sports fan sentimentally tells themselves about how their team’s Big Win folds into the bildungsroman of their own obviously unrelated life.
And then Covid-19 happened. The 2020 “season” was barely a real season at all. The game, once it fully returned, had slowed to a snail’s pace. The commissioner pushed through a series of increasingly salient rules changes — first by universalizing the designated hitter, then by adding all manner of ridiculous post-Covid innovations such as the automatic runner in extra innings — that altered the contours of the game I had grown to love. The Nationals themselves had imploded as a franchise almost immediately after winning it all, which certainly didn’t help matters. I felt like, maybe, after that final catharsis of 2019 . . . perhaps I had simply moved on in life from baseball?
I had not. I had forgotten about the World Baseball Classic. The WBC is basically the World Cup of baseball; staged every four years (the 2023 one was intended for 2021 but delayed because of Covid travel restrictions), it really does tend to draw a wonderful cross-section of the best players from around the world and result in seriously heated competition. You’ll find a mix of stars and solid roster players from MLB all playing for various national teams (and thus for genuine pride) against one another, and then be delighted by the inevitable surprises from players in less visible but thriving national leagues like South Korea’s or Japan’s. Last night’s championship game, with Japan narrowly edging out Team USA, featured all of these things in their full glory — “playoff”-level intensity and stakes from baseball in March! — and reminded me once again why I love this game.
Both the USA and Japan had to scrap their way to get there. Team America fought its way into the semifinals by coming back in the eighth inning against the Venezuelans; when Trea Turner hit that grand slam to flip a 7-5 deficit into a 9-7 winning margin, America collectively punched Hugo Chavez in the face from beyond the grave. Japan, meanwhile, had to claw its way past a surprisingly fierce Mexican squad that lacked stars but was stocked full of solid everyday Major Leaguers, and managed it on a two-run come-from-behind walk-off double.
The Japanese care deeply about the World Baseball Classic — their full commitment to an endeavor, once undertaken, is a characteristic cultural quality — and have the rings to show for it: They had won two of the four WBC tournaments prior to this. But last night they were generally thought to be an underdog against a well-rested Team USA heavily stocked with veteran hitting talents like Paul Goldschmidt, Mookie Betts, Trea Turner, Nolan Arenado, and one of the greatest players to ever step in the box in Mike Trout of the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. What Japan had on its side all throughout the WBC was a stronger pitching rotation, anchored by none other than Shohei Ohtani . . . who also, as it so happens, plays for the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. (Baseball fans are already grimacing knowingly in sympathy, but for those unaware: the Angels have for several years had (1) the greatest player in the game in Mike Trout and (2) the most exciting player in the game in Shohei Ohtani, and have not even so much as reached the playoffs since 2014.)
Ohtani wasn’t starting last night; instead he batted cleanup for the Japanese squad. (Ohtani is the first legitimate full-time “two-way” player — both a dominant starting pitcher and a powerful slugger when resting his arm — of any note since Babe Ruth.) It was a nerve-wracking game — Japan jumped out to a 3-1 lead early on and then did its best to jam a lid down upon the explosive U.S. lineup like a group of men trying to furiously plug up an unpredictable geyser. But America came back in the eighth off a Kyle Schwarber solo homer. And the ninth inning rolled around in a way a Hollywood screenwriter would have hesitated over (“too pat, the audience won’t buy it”), with Mike Trout up for the final out to face . . . none other than Shohei Ohtani, who had warmed up his pitching arm in the bullpen in anticipation of this ending. Two baseball greats representing their respective countries, teammates on a Major League team that has squandered its historic talents, playing for the only real championship that either one ever may win, facing off against one another in an at-bat that will decide the game.
And Ohtani struck Trout out swinging on a full count. Everyone in the stadium was expecting a fastball (including Trout), but instead Ohtani completely fooled him with a slider low and away. It’s the filthiest pitch you’ve ever seen. (You should see it too. I just wish I could hear it in Japanese.) The moment is electric; the narrative is unforgettable; the level of competition is peerless.
Every time I think I’ve gotten fed up with baseball as a sport — the sabermetrically sclerotic pace of the modern game in particlar — something like this happens. And I am grateful for it, because it brings me back to the essence of what I love about baseball beyond the game itself: the narratives. So here’s to the World Baseball Classic for bringing us a tournament as exciting (if not more so) as four regular seasons combined. I suspect that nobody will question its relevance or necessity after last night.