LOS ANGELES -- Where was the sense of urgency?
Team USA's Davey Johnson managed Sunday's World Baseball Classic semifinal in the same casual manner in which too many Yankees view this tournament. Yankees, as in, the vast majority of USA citizens -- not necessarily (but including) Team Steinbrenner.
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| Listen up, Davey Johnson: In a major international tournament, why did you manage as if these were spring training games? (US Presswire) |
Team Japan, which clocked Team USA 9-4 to move into the title game Monday against Korea, has been training zealously for the WBC since mid-February. So has Korea, which Monday night has the opportunity to score what would rank as perhaps the greatest baseball victory in the country's history.
The players from Team USA, meantime, scatter to their various spring training sites the same way they haphazardly convened, the inconvenient Grapefruit and Cactus League interruptions done with for another year, with most fans and many other big leaguers still not quite sure what to make of the WBC.
While nobody doubts the commitment of Team USA members such as David Wright, Derek Jeter, Jimmy Rollins and Jake Peavy, the vast majority of folks this side of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans still view this event as something to be avoided, like spinach.
"I think a lot of guys wanted to play but, for whatever reason, they didn't," Team USA's Derek Jeter said. "Recruiting? I think everybody knows what it's about. It's a tough time of year."
The gathering here in Los Angeles these past two days doesn't appear to have done much to have changed any minds. Following the lopsided Korea-Venezuela game Saturday, Johnson appeared to nap through the fourth inning, which quickly turned into a five-run, game-turning boon for Japan and a disaster for Team USA.
Following two hard singles and a tough error by second baseman Brian Roberts that easily could have been ruled a hit, Kenji Johjima stepped to the plate with three left-handed hitters -- Japan's eight-nine-one hitters -- due up next.
Yet, not only did Johnson fail to make a move toward his well-staffed bullpen, he didn't even have anybody warming up. No left-handers, no right-handers, nobody. And Team USA is carrying 14 pitchers.
It was a windy, cold, mid-50s evening. Team USA starter Roy Oswalt is nowhere near midseason shape. The first four batters in the inning hit ropes.
Yet the game proceeded with Oswalt for four more hitters. And into that span, Japan worked an RBI triple, an RBI single and a run-scoring double.
"I tried to get [John] Grabow up," Johnson said. "I didn't think it was going to take him so long. It was my fault. It took him longer in the cool weather to get loose."
How much longer?
"I hoped to have him ready by the [No. 8] hitter. But it was awfully cold out there, and he has a little bit of a tight groin muscle. And I should have just got him up a little earlier than I did."
Afterward, there was the predictable batch of questions about whether the Asian style of ball -- sound execution, attention to detail, moving runners along on the bases -- could teach the Americans a thing or two.
The short answer is, probably yes.
But that's also far too simple to be anywhere near a complete answer.
It is difficult to take this tournament seriously when Johnson, say, allows Peavy to remain in the game while getting bludgeoned (six runs allowed in two innings as Puerto Rico mercy-ruled Team USA earlier in the tournament) because he needs to "get his work in."
Or when he mismanages his bullpen in a single-elimination situation. Or when he says, as he did Sunday, that he thought Oswalt "was throwing good enough to stay in the ballgame." Or when he sends young Evan Longoria to the plate as a pinch-hitter as the potential tying run with one out and a man on third in the eighth -- without warning. Shane Victorino was set to bat when, suddenly, Johnson told Longoria -- a kid who just joined the team and had not yet batted in the WBC -- to go get 'em.
"He probably had a gut feeling," Victorino said.
It is difficult to take this tournament seriously when Team USA players shuttle in and out like it's a country club, guys canceling at the last minute before the start of the WBC or abandoning ship midstream because of injuries. And then, in the case of Boston second baseman Dustin Pedroia, they're healthy enough to play in a Grapefruit League game a few days later.
It's difficult to take it seriously when Team USA is playing guys out of position -- Mark DeRosa was at first Sunday against Japan, Adam Dunn in right field -- or playing guys based more on reputation than skill -- Jeter was at shortstop and Jimmy Rollins at designated hitter when the other way around clearly would be more conducive to winning. Team USA committed three errors Sunday, and four of Japan's nine runs were unearned.
It is difficult to take it seriously when so many elite players, especially pitchers -- CC Sabathia, Josh Beckett, A.J. Burnett and Jonathan Papelbon, to name a few -- continue to pass. Especially noticeable is the lack of pitching provided by the Yankees and Boston (outside of Daisuke Matsuzaka, who started for Japan on Sunday), who remain politically correct publicly regarding the WBC but privately, obviously, prefer to put winning above anything else and not take any chances with their meal tickets. And can you blame them?
"I know we have some general managers who are somewhat reticent. I'm going to be as kind here as I can," Commissioner Bud Selig was saying the other night. "Look, the clubs hear this all the time, but I'm going to say this to you as directly as I can: This is a time in life where I know how important your individual club is -- this is a time to put the best interests of the game ahead of your own provincial self-interest."
So what's left is Japan-Korea for a fifth time in this WBC, a title game that is sure to be crisp and riveting -- and put much of this country into a deep slumber.
What's left is for Jeter to return to the Yankees, and Wright to the Mets, and Ryan Braun to Milwaukee, and for them probably to answer several more stray questions along the lines of whether America's game really is America's game anymore.
Which ignores the premise, of course, of what might happen if Team USA truly fielded a team on which all of its elite players played. Jeter, to his credit, wouldn't bite when asked about that.
"I'd love to get another crack at [Japan] with the same team tomorrow," he said. "That's just making excuses. You can't sit here and say if we had this person or if we had that person. They played good."
True. But as for what Selig says is the greater good, the growth of the WBC, until Team USA gets serious about installing a manager who isn't past his prime and fielding a truly elite team, this tournament is never going to be anything more than an interesting novelty in this country.
