ShareThisBaseball crowned a world champion at Dodger Stadium Monday night.
Yes, I know. It's only March. But maybe it's time to re-think the designation that we customarily, and thoughtlessly, bestow on the team that wins the championship of North American professional baseball each October.
Maybe it's also time for more Americans to give the World Baseball Classic its due.
Japan outlasted South Korea, 5-3, in 10 innings of a memorable title game played in an electrifying atmosphere, the latest in a series that features regional rivalry, grievances dating back to World War II and ethnic touchiness.
Even without the sociological factors, this is the Asian equivalent of Dodgers-Giants. The Japanese won the first WBC in 2006. The Koreans won the Olympic gold medal in Beijing last summer. And the teams split four meetings in this tournament before Monday night.
It's but one of a number of great story lines that has unfolded in this 16-team tournament over the last two weeks. But they've gotten lost here in the cacophony of everything else going on in sports.
"In America, we have so many sports, basketball, football, that our attention is on whichever season is going on at that time," Phillies and Team USA infielder Jimmy Rollins said. "But in the other countries, when their team and their country is being represented, they stand up behind 'em 100 percent."
The composition of the crowds mirrored the interest level of the players. Some Americans had lots of interest, others couldn't be bothered. But the Asian fans were out in force all weekend at Dodger Stadium, and combined for the biggest single-game crowd in the two Classics Monday night: 54,846. The previous record: 45,640 March 7 at Tokyo for, naturally, Japan-Korea.
The message? There's great potential here, and it's pretty much an open field. Olympic baseball isn't coming back, since the IOC won't do it without major leaguers and the major leagues won't halt their season or allow their stars leave to accommodate the IOC.
So this will be the closest this increasingly international sport will have to a true world championship.
How to make it even better?
Start by reaching out to the hosting communities, to emphasize that this is a true festival of baseball and create an atmosphere that invites the locals to share it with the world. Add cultural events in conjunction with the tournament, as is done with the Olympics and World Cup, and add a Fan Fest as well.
Fans from elsewhere seem to have gotten the fever. The most important component to making this MLB-sponsored event grow is to make sure the host country is capable of winning the thing once in a while.
It sounds weird, true, since we invented the game. But it's not so much that the Japanese and Koreans have reinvented it as that we've failed to put our best foot -- or lineup -- forward in either edition of this tournament.
The onus is on our players and our teams to make sure they're competitive. That means, for example, having a Ryan Howard at first base rather than converted second baseman Mark DeRosa, as the USA was forced to do Sunday night against Japan.
If this is worthwhile -- and it is -- then it's worth doing right.
(Contact Jim Alexander at jalexander@PE.com.)
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
columnMust credit The Press-Enterprise of Riverside, Calif.
