Sean's Sports : Stop Getting Worked Up About Team USA

Stop Getting Worked Up About Team USA

Jeff Passan, who's usually pretty good over at Yahoo Sports, is critical of the fact that many American players will skip the World Baseball Classic in favor of staying healthy and getting prepared for the regular season as they usually do. He calls them apathetic and unwilling to play. For their country, no less!

After all, in other countries, "baseball is a matter of great national import and where a jersey with your country’s name is a gilded shroud. Participation is a must." But here in America, players are for some reason free to choose what they do with their talents. Also, America already has a championship, and it's called the World Series.

At first I was a little conflicted about this, about all the good players refusing to play. After all, I would love to see a team with Mauer and Hamilton and Sabathia and Teixeira and Longoria and Rollins and all our other great players. I'd love to see what they can do. I'd love to see Team USA dominate on the world stage and show those foreigners what's up.

But you know what I'd love more? I'd love to see the Twins win the World Series. Compared to the Twins, Team USA is about as important as the local Division III college team. I just don't care. If Mauer holds up the WBC trophy in March, then runs out of gas in August and we miss the playoffs ... would I be happy about that lame WBC trophy? Absolutely not. I'd be pissed. In America, we care more about our own teams than the national team. I know other countries don't understand that, but if they have thirty viable professional teams per country and all the players were paid millions upon millions of dollars to stay healthy and perform at a high level for their team, then maybe the national competition wouldn't matter all the much to them either.

I mean, I'm going to watch the WBC. I have MLB.TV, and I'm going to watch every inning I possibly can. Baseball's interminable offseason can't end soon enough, in my opinion. But I don't want any Twins playing in it. And more importantly than that, I respect their individual decisions. If they want to dedicate themselves to the regular season and to their team (the guys signing their checks, by the way), then more power to them.

This is the United States of America. The legacy of Team USA is that we don't force people to be on it.

So everybody relax when Cuba and Japan look really great and beat the tar out of our B squad. Then sign those players and make your team better; that's what's really important.

Posted by Sean Schulte at 2008-12-25 13:13:47