Highlights and lowlights from the best WBC ever, one capped by long-awaited USA win
The enduring image of the 2017 World Baseball Classic could pass for a staged publicity shot ordered by baseball commissioner and chief WBC salesman Rob Manfred, but it really happened organically. It is the picture of Adam Jones, wearing a jersey with USA across the chest, leaping in front of a WBC logo on the centerfield wall to steal a home run from Manny Machado last Saturday night, while behind him American flags wave and fans smile and wonder in delight. What a catch—not just for Jones but also for us. Baseball in March never looked better than it did in the fourth WBC.
This is the year the WBC, better known for catching flak, caught momentum. It was the best-attended, most-watched, most profitable, most dramatic international baseball tournament ever staged, and such facts were true even before the USA, to the relief of commissioner Rob Manfred, finally won the darn thing, though its 8-0 championship victory over a red-hot Puerto Rico team Wednesday night in Los Angeles was one of the rare dull games in the tourney.
The biggest problem with the WBC has always been the spoiled, provincial American fan, full of complaint that it’s not “big-time” enough without Mike Trout, broadcast network coverage, boffo ratings or betting pools. Okay, so it’s no competition for March Madness. So would you rather have . . . more dreadful spring training games populated by minor leaguers with nothing on the line?
The WBC has hit the bulls-eye on its three major goals: 1. Grow the game internationally. 2. Stimulate grassroots development. 3. Make money for the players and the owners.
Listen to what Puerto Rico manager Edwin Rodriguez said Wednesday night before his team played in its second WBC final, when asked how baseball has grown in Puerto Rico with the help of the WBC: “Huge changes for the last, I would say, eight years. Ever since we started off with Carlos Correa selection in the first pick of the 2012 draft, and then after that the 2013 WBC, and then [Francisco] Lindor, [Javier] Baez and Correa, I mean, there’s more youngsters playing baseball.”
Every night you could watch All-Stars and unknowns play their hearts out for their countries with exciting, emotional and oftentimes charmingly unkempt baseball. If you like baseball even a little bit, the WBC is a gift. It’s baseball played with urgency and elan. Meanwhile, a portion of the revenues—the tournament was expected to generate more than $100 million, a record—gets funneled back to local baseball federations around the world to foster growth of the game. We’re talking about building fields and ballparks and providing instruction.
While many in America yawn, or care more about the fifth-starter competition for their favorite MLB team, Japan sees nearly 30% of its TV viewers locked in to the WBC, and life nearly comes to a stop in Latin America countries when their team is playing.
There is only one thing “wrong” with the WBC: when it is played, which forces weird pitching rules and invites American players to avoid it because they argue it gets them out of their “routine.” There are two things the owners and players can do about this “problem” of timing:
1. Replace the four-day All-Star break (and the All-Star game itself) every fourth year with eight to 10 days of WBC action: two pools of four teams each in two venues, followed by an international home run derby, a doubleheader semifinal and a Sunday 6 p.m. Eastern time championship game in another venue. The top six ranked nations are in. Two teams earn their way in via qualifiers during spring training. As I wrote when the tournament began, this July idea has been discussed among MLB officials and, to a lesser degree, the players. It has support from key people. No more governors on pitchers and no more excuses from healthy players not to participate.
2. Do nothing. Leave the WBC where it is. Just accept the tournament for what it is: endearingly flawed and more important to baseball’s global brand than the domestic one, and a great run-up to the Major League Baseball season.
Attendance at the WBC passed one million for the first time. Television ratings were up 12% heading into the championship game. The first United States-Dominican Republic game—played on Saturday, March 11—drew 977,000 viewers—still not as many as a Thursday night TNT NBA games between Indiana and Charlotte, but amazing for a baseball game in March. The crowd that night in Miami drew comparisons to the most raucous crowds ever heard at a World Series.
Manfred wanted to see what the WBC would look like with Team USA in the finals. He got that and, as it turned out, even more, thanks to the superb pitching of Marcus Stroman, who is 5'8" inches of determination and who heeded the call most top American pitchers ignored or mocked. Stroman took a no-hitter into the seventh inning Wednesday night and left after allowing just one hit and one walk while striking out three. The tournament was everything for which Manfred could have hoped.
Maybe the next one, in 2021, will be held in July and have the sports landscape all to itself, rather than getting crowded by college basketball. And maybe top American players will want to be a part of the excitement, as did Giants reliever Mark Melancon, who hopped aboard the WBC train this year after it already had left the station. The tournament has history now, and a small but important footprint on the thick calendar of major American sporting events.
The next one will be even bigger—whether baseball moves it to July or keeps it in March. It wasn’t that the USA saved the WBC by winning it for the first time. It’s that the games were so compelling and the players were so engaged that the focus switched from who wasn’t there to the purity of the action on the field.
Is it perfect? No. This is the tournament in which Canada twice gave the ball to a guy who had been retired for three years (Ryan Dempster). Puerto Rico in the final used an independent league reliever (J.C. Romero) to try to hold down a USA lineup in which the highest-paid player in baseball (Giancarlo Stanton) batted eighth and the most decorated active player (Buster Posey) sat on the bench. But such quirkiness is part of the appeal, too. It’s fun. And who doesn’t want some more fun on a baseball field?
Jones’ catch may have been the biggest highlight of the WBC, but the memorable moments were many. To review, here are the other highlights from 16 days of March Gladness, as well as the lowlights, which had their own appeal in a strange way.
