Nolan Breslin
Well, Japan has finally beaten the United States making the series officially tied 1 to 1. While the U.S. won World War 2 while Japan won the World Baseball Classic America was officially beaten. Sure we lost but the U.S. losing in the finals has not been the biggest story of this tournament. The biggest Story has to be the ACL injury to the Met’s star closer Edwin Diaz who just over the offseason signed a 5-year $105,000,000 deal to then get injured celebrating a largely meaningless win with his teammates. In wake of his injury, many people around the world (specifically Americans) are questioning why top-tier athletes compete in what they believe to be a “meaningless” tournament. While many Americans and numerous sports writers around the country think this tournament just puts their star athletes at risk and may hurt their major league team. To virtually every other country on the planet that enjoys baseball, this tournament is basically a second form of the Olympics to them.
Just like the Olympics, the players who take part in this tournament see it as a great honor to play on the field with their countrymen and kick the other team’s ass in a slowly dying sport. Of course, they are risking injury and possibly risking millions of dollars. But that really doesn’t matter, no one gives a fuck when Lebron and his boys go over for the Olympics and dominate every other team on their way to the easiest gold medal possible.
But as soon as Edwin Diaz gets hurt the entire sports world is calling for the World Baseball Classic to no longer exist. Professional athletes risk injury every goddamn day, for baseball players every year we see two or three guys go down in spring training it just fucking happens they literally play a children’s game for a living. But to call for the complete shutdown of the World Baseball Classic over one injury of one of the MLB’s rising stars makes no goddamn sense.
Mike trout while also being probably the greatest baseball player of the past 10 years played in the tournament and he said “ I had the time of my life representing that USA on my chest! The energy was electric and made the WBC a moment I’ll always cherish” representing their country means more to these boys than any monetary amount of money you throw at them. In summary, let the professionals decide if they want to play in these tournaments all we got to do is sit back and watch and try to make a couple of bucks betting on games half of us know nothing about. If they get injured they get injured, it sucks but it’s part of being a professional athlete, and there isn’t shit we can do about it.
