March 6, 2023

By Patrick Kennedy

Canadian Baseball Network

For baseball fans, the wait is finally over, the Grand Ol’ Game is back.

No, not the game at the core of a billion-dollar enterprise known as Major League Baseball, but rather the unique, impassioned brand of baseball that’s showcased in a tournament that features teams from near and afar. We refer to the World Baseball Classic.

Twenty national teams made up of some of the finest players on the planet will compete in this year’s iteration of the event – the “real World Series,” in the jaded opinion of this lifelong patron of the sport.

Games will be played from March 8 to March 21 in stadiums in Tokyo, Taiwan, Arizona, and Miami, which will host the semifinals and final. Whichever side wins this 20-team saw-off – the fifth edition – can rightfully lay claim to the title “World Champions” because, frankly, that’s what they are.

How can the Houston Astros, the defending MLB titleholders, declare themselves champions of the world? I don’t recall the Astros doing a number on Nicaragua, South Korea, or Canada during its playoff run. Did they knock off the Netherlands? Jump over Japan? Push past Puerto Rico? Did they clip Columbia or Cuba or send Panama packing? Of course not. They defeated the Philadelphia Phillies in the final, a fellow gilded member of that exclusive alliance.

Sure, the Astros employed players from other countries, but only to keep pace with the lineups of their big-league brethren. When you think about it, even the term “World Series” is ludicrous, a phrase of such mind-numbing hyperbole it would make a Madison Avenue executive beam. And like all slick ad campaigns, it was too late to argue its merit once the phrase caught on - as it did in 1903 when the champions of the American and National professional baseball leagues in the U.S. of A. clashed for the first time; and, I hasten to add, no one who wasn’t as white as a baseball was allowed to play.

Yet it's not just the array of countries competing that has yours truly anxiously awaiting the WBC, although that’s surely part of the reason baseball’s appeal is global, unlike American football or even NHL ice hockey. What tickles my fancy is the genuine passion exhibited by players and fans alike, especially those from countries where the sport is practically a religion. It’s a display of enthusiasm and refreshing playfulness, as well as the childlike joy shown by participants who play not for pay, but for pride and honour. And bragging rights. Whenever they’re on the line, the excitement is palpable. It’s unlike anything one might feel over the course of big-league baseball’s dragged-out 162-game campaign and post-season.

I first witnessed that kind of emotion and passion eight years ago during a vacation in the sunny, sanctioned archipelago of Cuba. My wife Lorraine and our son Joe, then eight years old, took in a ‘serie nacional’ ballgame in the city of Holguin, where the local Cachorros hosted the Granma Alazanes. The game offered an endless supply of quirks, oddities, and peculiar customs, not to mention splendid baseball. Though I’d seen dozens of big-league contests, the game at Estadio Gral Calixto Garcia was far different than any I’d seen in North America. For starters, conga bands performed in the stands almost non-stop, friendly foes supporting their respective clubs in song, dance, and spirited chants.

The histrionics of players in Cuba’s top league were amusing and delightfully entertaining, as was the bizarre removal of an injured player from the field. (A Holguin baserunner, on the ground writhing in pain after tripping over first base, was surrounded by a quartet of coaches and teammates, each of whom grabbed a limb and carted the fallen Cachorro off the diamond, prompting a nearby gringo to label the technique the “Cuban stretcher.")

An indelible memory from that game involved Alazanes slugger Alfredo Despaigne, holder of the serie nacional single-season home mark. With the game on the line in the ninth inning, on-deck batter Despaigne, a squat, powerfully built man with tree trunks for legs, paid no heed to the flame-throwing Cachorros reliever delivering his warmup tosses. Instead, the impassive slugger turned towards the Alazanes’ lively-coloured conga band and using his bat as a baton began conducting. Once play resumed, Despaigne stepped casually into the batter’s box, dug in, and powdered the very first pitch far beyond the centre field wall and into the steamy Cuban night. It was baseball theatre at its finest, the epitome of sporting drama. A Cuban Casey at the Bat, with ol’ Case connecting this time.

Despaigne, who turns 37 in June, is back in the WBC for a fourth and perhaps final time. He has played professionally in Japan and Mexico and clearly likes the international limelight: He is the WBC’s career home run leader with seven, including three each in the past two events. Who knows? Son Joe and I might get another look at the aging icon if – and it’s a “mucho grande” if, the pundits tell us - Cuba advances out of its pool.

The vast majority of players in the two-week tournament are pros, whether they earn a minor leaguer’s relatively modest income or Los Angeles Angel superstar Mike Trout’s staggering $37-million annual salary, which, incidentally, works out to around $219,000 per game - $2,422 per inning - rain or shine.

On the flip side, we have the Czech Republic, which is one of three first-time competitors. The team got into the 2023 tournament by bouncing Spain in a qualifier. The Czechs are not professionals. Wait, that’s incorrect. They’re all professionals, just not in baseball. The Czechs’ top pitcher is a firefighter, the centre fielder a high school teacher, the third baseman/DH a financial analyst, and so on. Even manager Pavel Chadim has a day job. He’s a neurosurgeon in the city of Brno.

Not that any special incentive is needed, local fans rooting for our country will have added reason to cheer. Kingston’s own Matt Brash, the Seattle Mariners hard-throwing relief pitcher, is on the Canadian team. From a personal standpoint, despite tremendous odds against such a scenario taking place, how sweet it would be for this nostalgia-driven fan and his son to see Matty B summoned from the bullpen to face – who else? – Senor Despaigne at a key moment in an elimination game. If that happens, be sure to listen for the conga band playing in the background.

Patrick Kennedy is a retired Kingston Whig-Standard reporter. He can be reached at pjckennedy35@gmail.com