March Badness

I have a newfound appreciation for spring training. As the 2009 World Baseball Classic gets underway and Japan prances in holding its gaudy victor's belt high (no, wait, that's the other WBC; nice acronym, Bud), the quotidian banalities of the Grapefruit League seem riveting by comparison. Jamie Moyer pitched three scoreless innings? Awesome. Some random dude you've never heard of hit two doubles? Wow.

March is the extended wake-up cycle of the baseball fan. It's the time when we are jolted briefly out of unconsciousness by the alarm of pitchers and catchers reporting and then just as quickly hit the proverbial snooze button, and hit it a few more times, every few weeks or so, until we're finally fully woken up by New Pitcher's strained shoulder, or Expensive Outfielder's tweaked hammy, or Opening Day, or the NBA Finals. It's the time of year when the baseball news is like a grotesque dream, reality-like but subtly and distinctly wrong: the Phillies play the Blue Jays, the Mets play the Tigers, somebody scores 18 runs, everybody's wearing the wrong shirts.

And now we have a "classic" new tournament added to the mix. Setting aside the rather fluid notion of nationality espoused by the WBC's directors (A-Rod is Dominican? can we get Mark Teixeira on the Basque squad?), this is exactly the sort of thing that actual baseball fans are constitutionally unable to enjoy. No one wants important baseball stuff happening while they're asleep (World Series schedulers take note). Moreover, the US team is in an impossible situation. When you are universally expected to win---when you have to suffer the jingoistic harangues of bitchy octogenarians before ever setting foot on the field---then actual victory will be met with indifference, and losing with cynical resignation and/or a perverse wallowing in the faded glory of America's post-imperial decline. America is already enough like the Yankees; the last thing we need is the WBC to turn a lazy analogy into boring reality.