Venezuela beats Team USA at the World Baseball Classic

Every Sunday in the fall, millions of Americans flip on their televisions and have their wigs immediately blown back by the sound of an army on the march.

Thudding drums, an electric guitar that chugs like a tank’s engine turning over and blaring trumpet fanfare announce the onset of football on CBS, Fox and NBC. Black-and-white images of grim men suffering their way through brutal cold and broken bones give way to modern gladiators fighting it out in “the trenches” and coaches in branded camouflage caps talking about their team’s grit in between frequent salutes to veterans. 

Compared to all that stone-faced, enforced patriotism, the apple pie atmosphere of baseball is a breeze. The only major American professional sport that takes place outdoors in the summer is a suitably languid and loose-limbed affair.

Outside of the pitcher, catcher and batter, most men on a baseball diamond don’t stand at attention. The slow pace of the game leaves them free to scratch, spit and wool-gather while they wait for brief flashes of something to do. If things get too exciting, and action seems imminent, players will frequently call timeout to have a confab in the middle of the field. Commentators fill the resulting hours of dead air with personal anecdotes, weaving a charming one-sided conversation through the occasional interruption of athletics.

Few games are worse suited to America’s modern rock-ribbed military worship than baseball. But that didn’t stop Team USA from trying out a stand-up-and-salute shtick as a collection of America’s finest players grimaced their way through the recent World Baseball Classic, which culminated on Tuesday night with the team’s 3-2 loss to Venezuela.

A quadrennial competition between national baseball squads, the WBC is like the World Cup — if only 15 or so countries cared about soccer. The patriotism and pride of the players means they take the games seriously. But the lack of much global presence for the game — beyond the U.S.’s immediate neighbors, along with Japan and South Korea — and its preseason scheduling leaves the series feeling much more laid-back than, say, the Summer Olympics.

Teams lean into fun aspects of their national culture as they make their way through the tournament. Team Italy, for example, celebrated home runs by donning an Armani jacket in the dugout and taking a ceremonial shot of espresso. 

Team USA took the opposite approach, turning its string of wins into an extended chance to replace “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” with “God Bless America.” The players snapped salutes at each other after great plays. They wore tacti-cool T-shirts sporting slogans like “front toward enemy,” a phrase lifted directly from explosives used by the U.S. military). 

Team captain and New York Yankee Aaron Judge — an incredibly gifted ballplayer with a name lifted from heavy-handed ‘70s sci-fi — repeatedly expressed the view that his team was trying to win this one for the boys on deployment. The team even brought in Robert O’Neill, the former Navy SEAL who claims to have killed Osama bin Laden in the 2011 raid on his compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, for a pep talk before their March 13 victory over Canada. He spun his yarn about shooting an unarmed 54-year-old terrorist to a bored-looking group. If the far-off stares from Team USA during O’Neill’s speech didn’t give the game away, their performance in the tournament’s final on Tuesday night did. 

Team USA might have had all the might of the largest military in the world behind them, but a logistics snafu lost that hoo-rah somewhere between their hearts and their bats. Bryce Harper’s two-run homer in the eighth inning briefly offered a brief bit of hope, but the Americans fell to Venezuela 3-2 in front of a raucous crowd in Miami. 

Now, we don’t want to overstate the case that the U.S. lost because the team was too busy watching “American Sniper.” Team USA came into the championship game with an uncharacteristically cold offense. Both Venezuela and the United States’ roster were almost entirely stocked with Major League Baseball stars. The Venezuelan aces and sluggers simply played better than their American counterparts. Championship games are best of one out of one. It happens. 

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But three out of the four final teams in the tournament looked like they were having fun out there on the diamond while Team USA was doing everything but playing “Taps” as their starting pitchers walked off the field. It couldn’t have helped the mood in the dugout Tuesday night as Venezuela scored in the third inning and led 2-0 through most of the game.

It’s not so weird that the ultramilitarism that’s occupied the country since 2001 would find a home in the national pastime. Baseball is an easy stand-in for America, and vice versa. 

But in the midst of another Middle East war, and while facing off against Venezuela, whose president was recently arrested and seized by American military forces, the rally-round-the-flag bit was more than just corny, it was too on the nose. Team USA’s over-the-top patriotism introduced an imperial subtext — a reminder, perhaps unintended, of Donald Trump’s incursion into and domination of their opponent’s country — into what should have been just a game.

The salutes and slogans were also ineffective. Despite a roster full of noted sluggers like Kyle Schwarber and Judge, Team USA scraped by with a sleepy offense. The team’s pitchers carried them through the tournament as the team struggled to get hits and won low-scoring affairs via scattered homers. All that military bonhomie didn’t produce a well-oiled effort on the field, where hits and base runners stack to create overwhelming wins. When the aces met Venezuela, a roster comprised of a healthy mix of power and contact hitters, the contrast was obvious. The close final tally masks a game where Venezuela seemed to always be threatening to score.  

Four years from now, here’s hoping a new crop of American sluggers remember to get a little goofy with it. The United States is a lot more than deadly weaponry and ill-fated military interventions. It’s blitzes on the frozen tundra sure, but, it’s also Ernie Banks playing two on a beautiful July day. It’s “boot in your ass,” but it’s also “sucking on a chili dog, outside the Tastee Freez.” It’s Kid Rock, but it’s also the Replacements.

The 2030 team should take a few cues from its fellow semifinalists. Baseball is fleeting, a bit of good-hearted nationalism doubly so. Try to land kick flips in the bullpen. Have Paul Skenes and Pete Crow-Armstrong take some two-step lessons before the tournament. Hit a homer? Chug a Coke. 

Anything would be better than trotting out another bog standard pro sports salute to the troops that year.

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