Baseball’s Brave New World
By MIKEY HIRANO CULROSS
RAFU SPORTS EDITOR
Saturday, March 28, 2009

The organizers of the World Baseball Classic have wisely emphasized national pride in promoting the tournament. Now it’s time for the U.S. to smarten up a little.

Photos by MIKEY HIRANO CULROSS/Rafu Shimpo
Ichiro holds up the World Baseball Classic trophy that Japan defended, beating Korea 5-3.

Japan’s Seiichi Uchikawa and Akionri Iwamura celebrate with Hiroyuki
Nakajima after scoring on Ichiro’s single in the tenth inning of the WBC
Championship game at Dodger Stadium Monday evening.

Left, Joyce Kim embodied the spirit of the Korean fans, chanting and cheering, praying and crying, hopeful until the very last pitch. Right, not to be outdone by their Korean counterparts, fans of team Japan turned out in huge numbers, with flags, painted faces and costumes.


With the WBC slogan “Baseball spoken here,” displayed in Italian behind them, Vicky Kim, Daniel Lomeli, Faustino Gonzalez and Amber Peaker wear their allegiances with pride–just what the tournament organizers hoped for.

At 10:39 p.m. on Monday, 22-yearold Yu Darvish bent at the waist and screamed mightily into the Dodger Stadium infield grass, a rebel yell that was heard across oceans around the baseball world.

The pitching phenom for team Japan had just recorded the final out in the 2009 World Baseball Classic and as he straightened up, he was mobbed by his teammates.

Perhaps a bit a of relief for Darvish, who lost the lead and flirted with losing the game an inning earlier, allowing South Korea to tie the score in the ninth.

The young starter for the Nippon Ham Fighters of Japan’s Central League was clearly overtaken by the weight of the situation and it showed in his shaky performance.

After Ichiro Suzuki’s single gave Japan the lead in the tenth, Darvish said he was able to settle down.

“I felt more confident and just tried to throw as hard as I could,” he said after the game.

Confidence must be in plentiful supply at the offices of the WBC’s organizing committee. The final of the 2009 tournament was a superbly-played contest between two teams that are arguably the best in the world. Yes, perhaps better than any club in the majors, and that’s something we here in the baseball’s birthplace simply cannot avoid.

Jimmy Rollins, the Philadelphia Phillies shortstop who played for the U.S. team that lost to Japan in the semifinals, said Japan and Korea both play fundamentally sound baseball, and augment their play with heart.

“They play with passion. We do also, but they wear theirs on their sleeves,” Rollins said after Sunday’s semifinal loss. “They play winning baseball. They don’t worry about the big things, they do all the little things right.”

Team Japan’s style of precision play is one of high-percentages. They bunt runners over, play hit-and-run and seem to get sacrifice flies as needed. Losing to them is like bleeding to death from a series of paper cuts.

South Korea, whose professional league has been in existence only since 1982, plays much in the same way, with an extra helping of power. The fact that these two teams were so evenly matched provided a truly electric atmosphere for Monday’s final. It was the Red Sox-Yankees or Lakers-Celtics multiplied by national pride.

Fans loyal–no, hysterically dedicated–to both sides showed in huge numbers to offer their support. On the Korean side, newspapers and other companies supplied noise makers and
South Korean flags free of charge. Japanese devotees arrived in all manner of costume and face paint.

Popular Japanese comedian Nakayama Kinnikun traveled to Los Angeles to watch and hope for a repeat of his country’s championship three years ago.

“Japan’s winning performance in the 2006 WBC inspired me, so I wanted to come again, hopefully to have that same feeling,” he said.

The chanting and cheering began prior to the first pitch and didn’t end until the very last pitch. Whether there was a home run or a routine ground out, the drummed rhythm of “Dae-han-minguk” (da-da da da-da) or “Nip-pon!” (da-da-da) never let up. And when the game ended, it seemed as though hardly anyone had left early. Those who did missed a gem.

Isn’t that exactly as it should be for a championship game?

Aside from a strong field of 16 national teams this time around, the WBC is heavily dependent–for better or for worse–on the success of the USA’s team of big league stars. Regardless of how much attention is drawn in other nations, it’s here where the widest market–and the biggest budgets–reside. Moreover, the majors are still the pinnacle of the sport, and the U.S. is still the gold standard for players around the globe.

Three years ago, in the inaugural tournament, the red, white and blue were nothing short of a disappointment, failing to advance beyond the second round. This year, despite making it to the semifinals Sunday, the attendance for that game was no where near what the WBC brass had hoped. The announced paid attendance of over 43,000 included plenty of no-shows, with the cold and windy weather partly to blame.

On Monday, the crowd at arguably the majors’ best venue for baseball was nearly full, with seemingly every one of the 54,846 ticket holders in a seat.

On the telecast of Monday’s game, Major League Baseball commissioner Bud Selig said it is in the interest of the U.S. and baseball as a whole to make more of a commitment to assembling the finest possible American team for the WBC.

“This is so big and the clubs are so anxious–and so am I, obviously–for this sport to become international,” Selig commented. “We’re going to have to get people to understand... that we need everybody’s best players and we shouldn’t accept anything less.”

Selig added that a good idea to make team USA better for tournaments is to use a selection process, much in the way that most other countries do.

Some, including Rollins, believe the U.S. may be at a disadvantage simply because of timing. The WBC thus far has been held in March, right in the thick of major league spring training. Players are rusty and nowhere near in mid-season form, as opposed to Asian players, who normally begin team workouts on Jan. 1.

Team USA manager Davey Johnson referred to the schedule in Japan and cited the mantra, “takusan renshu,” “much practice.”

Japan’s manager, Tatsunori Hara said Sunday that the emergence of big league players from his country proves that the game’s best players can emerge from anywhere.

“Just the fact that we have these Japanese players in the major leages–Ichiro, Johjima, Fukudome, Iwamura, Matsuzaka–encourages us and lets us know that we can do this, that we can compete on a world level, and that was seen in today’s result,” Hara said after his team ousted the U.S.

Hara predicted Monday’s final would be “the game of the century.”

At the same press conference, Johjima said, “Just looking at this game, you can’t say that Japan is better than America in baseball.

Just being able to wear this uniform now, and represent Japan here in this tournament is going to be a great memory for me. I don’t think we’ve surpassed the level of American baseball, but the recognition of the ability of Japanese players is one of the great things to come out of this tournament.”

After Monday’s final, Korean starting pitcher Bong Jung-keun echoed the opinion that the squads on the field that night had every right to be there.

“I believe that we were the two best teams in the world,” Bong said. “Asian baseball is the world’s best, and Korea and Japan were able to fight until the end. It was a glorious moment for all of us.”