I've got good news for Derek Jeter, Kevin Youklis and Jake Peavy. You're not playing for me, my honor or my pride. I don't care if you cough it up in the World Baseball Classic to Puerto Rico, the Netherlands or Guinea Bissau. Take it easy guys: the future of our country is not on the line.
Frankly, I don't care about the WBC in the first place. Coming as it does during Spring Training and missing so many top players gives it the essence of pre-season irrelevance in the first place. The exhibition-style rules that limit play -- e.g., pitching limits and mercy rules -- reinforce that. There's no way that's going to compete with my anticipation about the start of the season.
In a larger sense, these nation vs. nation sports exhibitions like the Ryder Cup, Davis Cup, Olympics, etc. designed to inflame nationalistic passions have always bemused me. Why do I care whether a collection of American professionals defeats a collection of Angolan amateurs in basketball? Athletes who are implored to "represent their country" should tell those urging them to shut the fuck up. They don't owe any of us anything, and nothing they do in those contests accrues to your advantage or mine in any way.
I'd feel a lot more national pride if we could reinvent our health care system so it worked, show some national restraint on energy use, treat the rest of the world a little better, balance our books, educate our children, feed our poor. But even without these things, and regardless of whether we outpitch Venezuela in the WBC, I feel pretty lucky to have been born in the freest, richest country the planet's ever produced.
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