Look up into the rafters of TD Banknorth Garden, and you'll see 17 banners that have the words, "Boston Celtics, World Champions." Take a gander outside Yankee Stadium and you'll notice something similar: the words "26-time World Champions" prominently displayed. And it makes me wonder, who ever declared the words "American" and "world" to be synonyms?
As I was watching the championship game of the World Baseball Classic -- a game between South Korea and Japan -- former Mets GM Steve Phillips, for the first time in my recollection, made a point that I actually agreed with: Just because a team wins at the highest level of professional sports in our country doesn't make that team a world champion. Back 50 years ago, that may have been the case. We were the best at baseball, the best at basketball, the best at football. And why wouldn't we have been? We invented these games -- as such, the "American champion" was the "world champion."
But that's not the case anymore. With the exception of football -- a game that, despite all its domestic success, has struggled mightily to expand beyond our borders (see: Canadian Football League, NFL Europe) -- the rest of the world has caught up to us.
A few years back, Bobby Valentine, the former Mets manager who went on to coach in Japan, suggested that the World Series champion in the U.S. should play the Japanese champion. And while it seemed like a cute idea, nobody really took Bobby V seriously. It was just another one of his team morale-boosting antics, like the time he was thrown out of a game but came back into the dugout wearing a fake mustache with glasses.
But as it turns out, Bobby V wasn't lying; Japan, along with several other countries, is freaking good at baseball.
There have been two World Baseball Classic tournaments, and there's only been one champion: Japan. How'd the U.S. do? After failing to make it out of the second round in the inaugural WBC, the States made it all the way to the semifinals this time. Hey, that's arguably better than we've been in the Olympics. America failed to medal in 2004, and last year, in baseball's final appearance at the Games, it wasn't the U.S. taking gold (we managed bronze), but South Korea.
And it's not just baseball that has been subject to globalization. Look at what's been happening in the NBA. The 2007-2008 season featured 76 international players -- about a fifth of the league -- from 31 countries and territories. And these guys aren't just playing in the league; they're dominating it. In the past seven years, only two of the league MVPs have been born on United States soil: Kobe Bryant and Kevin Garnett. The Spurs, routinely the team with the highest percentage of international players, have won three of the last six titles. Do you think that's a coincidence? It's not. And neither was America's bronze medal in basketball at the 2004 Olympics.
So how has the United States slipped so much on the world stage? Well, first, let's be fair to America for a moment. The WBC is a tournament that takes place during spring training, when American players aren't exactly at the top of their game. And we never send our best players to the Olympics because it takes place in the middle of the MLB season. And even though the U.S. was outclassed in basketball at the 2004 Games, that was probably a function of poor team building; the "Redeem Team," a carefully constructed group of players, dominated the Olympics last year.
Still, there's no denying that the capability of the rest of the world in these traditionally American sports is rapidly improving. For the most part, they're just as good as us, if not better. And frankly, there's nothing we can really do about it.
Well, that is unless we want to give them some of their own medicine. International soccer, here we come.
--
David Heck is a junior majoring in philosophy. He can be reached at David.Heck@tufts.edu.
