The United States triumphs at last in its own “national pastime”
AT FIRST glance, it sounds about as surprising as the sun rising in the east: on March 22nd the United States baseball team was crowned as world champions. In the semifinals of the World Baseball Classic (WBC), the quadrennial international tournament organised by Major League Baseball (MLB), America took advantage of two uncharacteristic defensive errors by Japan, a two-time champion, and escaped with a 2-1 victory. The following night, in front of over 50,000 fans at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles, they blew out the previously undefeated Puerto Rican team, holding their rivals hitless for the first six innings and going on to win 8-0.
Well, duh: baseball is an American sport. The game was born in the USA (though not in Cooperstown, New York, as the myth tells it); the world’s finest league by far is based there (with a lone Canadian team); and the majority of that league’s players and stars are American. Just as one would assume that the world champion of Australian-rules football would probably be Australian, and the world champion of hurling might well be Irish, it stands to reason that...Continue reading