As Bryce Harper rounded the bases on his game-tying two-run homer in the eighth inning of Tuesday night's World Baseball Classic final, he exchanged a salute with his commanding officer, third base coach Dino Ebel, then moved to point at the American flag patch on his uniform. He looked at the wrong arm at first, mixing up the Stars and Stripes with the slightly larger Capital One patch on his other sleeve.
That was a fairly representative moment of how unpleasant it was to watch Team USA in this tournament, and why it was a small mercy to watch them lose to Venezuela, 3-2. With all due respect to Comrade Ratto, the nationalistic pride on display by the Americans carried a different tenor than the WBC's other contenders. Of course it would. This game featured a nation that had recently bombed and invaded its opponents'. Rather than making an effort to keep that association at arm's length, Team USA embraced it. They saw what the U.S. men's hockey team did at the Olympics and thought to follow that but have even less fun in the process.
What did that look like in practice? The Budweiser Clydesdales have stolen less valor than these flag-humping runners-up. It began well before Harper's salute to imaginary service. Inviting the looniest former Navy SEAL around to deliver a pregame speech for the team was one lowlight. Another was Cal Raleigh wearing a "Front Toward Enemy" T-shirt and being a jackass toward his actual Seattle Mariners teammate, whom he is scheduled to see every day for the next six months or so. As other squads like Italy showed it was possible to be American-born and still have fun at an exhibition baseball tournament, Team USA was gripping the bat too tightly, metaphorically and then literally in the final.
But let's not forget about the real heroes: the military, and guys who almost served in it. "There was a big part of me that was fully intent on serving in the military," Paul Skenes said earlier this month, about his time at the Air Force Academy before he transferred to LSU and pursued a pro baseball career. For him, playing for Team USA is "not serving, but it's a pretty close second." It's a deliberate choice to say something like that, especially at a time when the actual U.S. military is either facilitating the bombing of civilians around the world, or doing it directly.
Athletes by nature tend to talk about what a privilege is to play the sport, but throughout this WBC, Team USA operated as if the point of performing humility was to earn praise. Surely and justly they felt it was an honor to be chosen to represent the U.S., but they expected everyone else to be proud of them too. Arrogance and sourness permeated the clubhouse. For all those reasons and more, it was satisfying to see the game-winning hit come from Venezuela's Eugenio Suárez, the two-time All-Star who had his citizenship application canceled last year as Donald Trump's administration deliberately makes life more difficult for immigrants. Box scores can't be a substitute for actual consequences, but they can make some hardasses unhappy for a night. Aaron Judge will have to get that photo with Kash Patel some other time. Manager Mark DeRosa thought his team had clinched a quarterfinal spot before they actually did, and while an American failure of reading comprehension and math skills would have been a fine metaphor to go out on, this exit felt more poetic. Good riddance to these losers. See you in a week for the MLB season.
