Sho business is great business for baseball

The World Baseball Classic is the best on-ramp MLB could have in 2023.

The great rush of Tuesday’s ninth inning in Miami quickly turned into wistful resignation.

Now that baseball has found a way to inspire us again, here comes the only thing that could deflate us: The regular season.

The Pirates. The cheerleading TV announcers. The replay challenges. The Pirates. The parade of pitchers. The deafening sound systems. The 13-man pitching staffs brought on by “careful” trips to the Injured List. Did I mention the Pirates?

This time, maybe we can retain our post-WBC high a little longer.

It’s hard to imagine that the last couple of weeks will do anything but energize the long, upcoming season. We were reminded just how intoxicating this game can be when played at a cosmic level, with pre-season enthusiasm and precision.

But we also will greet a pitch clock, a balanced infield alignment and the potential for many more stolen bases than ever. You can argue that some of those changes were artificial and unnecessary, particularly since the pitch clock and the no-shift rules weren’t in place for the WBC, but they will add curiosity and novelty to a stilted game.

More than anything else, the WBC refreshed the image of the modern ballplayer, particularly since the best U.S. offensive players reveled in each other’s company and played to the hilt. We’ll all remember the U.S.-Japan final because of Shohei Ohtani and Mike Trout meeting at high noon, but the U.S. comeback win over Venezuela was much more dramatic, just like Japan’s comeback win over Mexico, just like the Puerto Rican victory over the Dominican Republic that was punctuated by Edwin Diaz’s celebratory injury.

Without Ohtani, Trea Turner would probably have been the outstanding player of the tournament with his five-homer surge, which had to be satisfying for a player who has been classified as a fast lightweight and has chafed over it. 

The fact that the lineup was often so deep that Turner had to bat ninth was an indication of the mass U.S. commitment, at least from the hitters. Had more of the pitchers opted to play, or had they been allowed to play by MLB teams leery of insurance concerns, maybe the U.S. would have steamrolled. But the U.S. was powerful enough to expect to score four runs against anybody, and yet lost 3-2 to Japan.

“I can’t believe anybody would rather be in spring training than play in a game like that,” said catcher J.T. Realmuto of Team USA. Indeed, the WBC will do much to devalue the already exposed myth that MLB players need seven weeks of preseason sunshine.

Japan’s game with Korea drew 62 million viewers in Japan, and Japan-USA drew over 6.5 million at its climax. The Dominican players, when surveyed, said winning the WBC would be more important than winning a World Series.

Commissioner Rob Manfred immediately promised that the tournament would return in 2026. This was a championship that was mocked and generally obscured in its first four editions. Who remembers Adam Jones and the U.S. win in 2017?.

But the lodestar, and the ultimate beneficiary, of the WBC was Ohtani, who caused Fox’s John Smoltz to admit, “I’ve run out of words.” That might be his slickest trick of all.

Ohtani hit the longest home run, summoned the top exit velocity, and tied for the fastest pitch in the entire competition. A double play ball in the ninth matched Ohtani with Trout, his Angels teammate, two lonely beacons in an Orange County fogbank during their 162-game seasons. Trout has played three postseason games in 11 full seasons, winning none, and Ohtani hasn’t visited the MLB playoffs yet. Yet here they were in a glamorous staredown, the current equivalent of Clemens vs. Canseco or Koufax vs. Mays. Routinely they were described as the “two greatest players in the world,” which is not inarguable but, for these purposes, close enough.

As you know Ohtani flung two 100 mph pitches past Trout and then got him on a slider. “He won Round One,” Trout said, which may indicate that he’s expecting Ohtani to play somewhere else in 2024 and thus provide a Round 2. Or maybe it was just gritted-teeth frustration after making the final out.

In any event, the disbelief that Ohtani inspires about his peers has now spread worldwide. Said Lars Nootbar, the Cardinals’ outfielder who played for Japan: “All you’ve got to do is be born to be able to throw 100 and hit the ball 500 feet. There’s really not much going into it.”

The fact that Ohtani was not the American League’s Most Valuable Player last season underlined the problem with the wording of the award, not with the voters or anything else. The Angels were so invisible that Ohtani played no valuable part in the 162-game season. But he transcends that  to a degree that all of us have had trouble comprehending until we saw him when it really mattered.

Ohtani was going back and forth from the dugout to the bullpen because of his DH duties Tuesday. Only once had he come in to save a game in the ninth, much less against MVP winners Trout and Mookie Betts, with Paul Goldschmidt on deck. We’ve seen enough career starters run aground in relief appearances, during postseason series, to know how hard that is.

Ohtani’s double-duty has become second nature to him, and something he prizes. There is no real major sports equivalent for it. It’s similar to what decathletes do, except they might perform three times a year. What if Patrick Mahomes was also a Pro Bowl cornerback? 

Ohtani signaled all this when he came back to Japan for an exhibition and slammed the first of two 3-run homers against the Hanshin Tigers, this one while a knee touched the ground. By then the Japanese team was at full throttle. Manager Hideki Kuriyama had gotten the gig in late 2021, and the team began practicing together in February. These workouts drew big crowds and large streaming audiences, too.

It makes one fantasize about an expansion plan. Why should Nashville, Portland and Las Vegas become new major league markets when Japan is available? 

This is a far more talented Japanese team than the ones that won the first two WBCs, and its players are far more suited for MLB. The exploits of Kazuma Okamoto, Munetaka Murakami and Kensuke Kondo will make them more recognizable to the U.S. markets if and when they make the trans-Pacific leap.

Japan is now 30-8 in five WBCs, and their flawless defense, speed and clockwork execution should be a model for all MLB organizations. You can play like that and still hit home runs and accept walks. You don’t have to be a prisoner of false choices. You can excel at everything.

If Shohei Ohtani hasn’t taught us that by now, we’ve been watching the Pirates too long.