Venezuela played with heart, Italy sipped espresso and the Dominicans showed off their verve at the tournament. America wanted to concentrate on war
O
n the morning of the World Baseball Classic final between the United States and Venezuela, the headline of the New York Times daily briefing read, “America, alone,” in reference to the unwillingness of the country’s traditional allies to join the war with Iran. The revived rhetoric of America First, once a restoration of the isolationist, often Nazi-sympathetic sentiments of the 1930s, has coalesced into current policy, status, attitude: America by itself, making its own rules, intent on largely playing alone by them.
Venezuela won the final, thrillingly, 3-2 over Team USA, but not before the hosts extended that isolationism with a sourness that produced a comically vapid extension of American bravado, and nearly undermined a tournament that in its 20th year is at last becoming one of baseball’s great successes.
The WBC was a two-week block party. Canada, fresh off the Toronto Blue Jays’ American League pennant, reached the quarter-finals for the first time. Venezuela played with heart and national pride (the players even had a drum in the dugout, each base hit a party), the Dominicans with the verve characteristic of the Serie del Caribe, and in a surprising semi-final run, the Italians adopted the underdog spirit of a soccer nation intent on proving they can swing the lumber, too – all while sipping espresso in the dugout.
