The vibe around the World Baseball Classic feels different this time. There’s anticipation. There’s excitement. There’s intrigue. I’m looking forward to it, which is kind of saying something.
On the surface, it makes sense. There’s anticipation because we’ve not seen live, full-tilt major league-quality baseball since November. There’s excitement because there are so many stacked rosters. There’s intrigue because we might get to see some curious matchups, such as Shohei Ohtani pitching to Angels teammate Mike Trout.
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Not that any or all of those things have been absent from previous tournaments, but underneath it all there just seems to be more weight in 2023. It’s not measurable, but it’s definitely noticeable. The stakes feel higher. The whole thing just feels more, dare I say, epic.
Players, including the biggest names, are eager to participate. Those who can’t speak of massive disappointment. You get the sense that it matters now. The competition, the national pride, the camaraderie with new/temporary teammates. The ingredients feel more potent than ever with this edition, and it’s all lining up to produce a memorable tournament — and perhaps, for the first time, finally produce the kind of event that makes the WBC a thing.
As my colleague Ryan Fagan has written, the WBC has always felt like a glorified exhibition. As much as the players may have wanted to win, there were no stakes, no real prize. It seemed more about fun than anything. Not this year.
“There’s only one thing on our mind, trying to win this whole thing. … That’s the whole reason I signed up, trying to win this thing,” Team USA captain Mike Trout told reporters recently. “There’s nothing else, you know? Anything else is a failure.”
That’s not just press conference talk. It’s a real and desirable goal.
Which has me wondering: Could a WBC championship ever be considered equal to, or at least close to, winning the World Series? It’s not a crazy idea. The World Cup has become the most prestigious championship in soccer, widely regarded more highly than even a Premier League title. But that didn’t happen overnight, or even over a few decades. There’s been nearly a century of World Cup history that’s built the hype to make it what it is now. The WBC, meanwhile, is just a teenager. But as it matures, who knows? We can again look to the World Cup for a sliver of the potential.
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There were only three World Cups before a 12-year hiatus fueled by World War II stopped early momentum. But since resuming in 1950, with a huge assist from the 1958 edition that introduced the world to Pele, the World Cup has grown into the most-watched sporting event in the world. The WBC had four editions before the COVID pandemic canceled both the 2021 edition and any momentum it had gained from an exciting 2017 edition. I can’t help but see a small parallel.
To be clear, we’re still probably decades away from the WBC becoming even halfway to the level of the World Cup. But maybe we’ll all look back in 30 years and say that 2023 was the first “true” or “modern” World Baseball Classic, the year the event achieved that next level of prominence and importance.
So what will it take for that to happen? Maybe Ohtani goes full super-human again and wows the world with dominance on the mound and a few big home runs with his bat. Maybe Trout goes off against all comers and re-establishes his place as the best player on the planet. Maybe those two face each other in the final with the bases loaded and the game on the line. Maybe the stacked Dominican Republic roster produces a slew of top-shelf performances and just blows every other country away. Maybe someone we’re not thinking of repeatedly comes up big in a way that makes people feel like they just have to watch.
Regardless of how this year’s tournament turns out, the WBC still has the potential to grow into something that causes its own serious stir as a super-prestigious event in the baseball world, the kind of thing that becomes a big deal to even casual baseball fans, the kind of thing that grows baseball’s footprint around the world, the kind of thing that creates new fans who fall in love with the game.
That’s probably still a ways away. But it would have to start sometime. 2023 seems like as good a point as any.