Pulling Against the Home Team, On Home Soil, In Our Own Sport

This was supposed to be a different blog, one having to do with what it’s like to be a book author who’s been hustled by every crank and scam artist under the sun. I spent much of the day writing it, and I’ll publish it soon enough.

But for now, other events got in the way that left me scrambling to crank out a completely different blog.

In this case, that event is the World Baseball Classic (or WBC), which recently concluded here in the US of A.

The WBC is held every three years and brings in teams from around the world – as you might expect from an event called the “World” Baseball Classic. This year, 20 different countries took part, from five different continents (sorry Africa).

Most of the world’s baseball passion is concentrated in North America, Latin America, and the parts of Asia that include Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. But it’s gaining ground in other countries as well. It will never be nearly as popular as soccer on the world stage, or even basketball. But more countries are following it, on more continents.

This year’s World Baseball Classic took place across a couple of weeks, with games in Japan, Puerto Rico and the United States.

I recorded all the games, but have yet to watch a single one in its entirety. That’s what happens when you record hours and hours of sports programming in a single day, and have maybe two hours tops to watch any of it. You simply cannot fit it all in.

This blog isn’t really about baseball, though. Or sports. It’s about what happens as a fan when you find yourself pulling against a team you would normally pull for, because of factors that have less to do with sports than with global events that divide you from your own country and everything it used to stand for, or at least pretended to.

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I had planned on watching the WBC championship game, but haven’t done so yet. I know who won, though. When you spend as much time on the internet as I do, it’s all but impossible to avoid spoilers.

The game pitted the favored USA squad against Venezuela. It was played on Tuesday (March 17), and was quite the intriguing matchup.

The USA is roughly 10 times bigger than Venezuela in population, and it’s where baseball in its current form got its start way back in the mid-1800s. Baseball is the national pastime here, though it long ago ceded the popularity crown to American football. Even so, the USA produces the most major league baseball players just because of its sheer size.

But when it comes to elite baseball players, Venezuela and the USA are not that far apart. Venezuela has produced a whole bunch of All-Star and Hall-of-Fame caliber baseball players. Venezuelans excel at the sport, and are much more passionate about it than Americans on a per-capita basis.

That’s partly why this was an intriguing matchup.

The other part is that earlier this year, U.S. armed forces invaded Venezuela, killed a bunch of people, snatched its president, arrested him, and carted him back here to face criminal charges for who fucking knows. You can read about it in this earlier blog.

Well, it all makes for a tasty rivalry, yes? The invading country playing the invaded country in the championship game of the World Baseball Classic. What’s not to love?

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As luck would have it, the WBC final between the USA and Venezuela was played in Miami, which is the unofficial Capital of Latin America. An estimated 70% of Miami’s residents are of Latino or Hispanic origin. More than half were born outside the United States. Around two-thirds speak Spanish as their primary language.

I’ve had personal experience with the deep Latin American culture in Miami. During a honeymoon stop there 20-odd years ago, people came up to my wife and I and immediately spoke Spanish, because we look like we should speak Spanish. We’re both dark-skinned, dark-haired people due to our Filipino roots (she’s 100% Filipina-American; I’m a 25% mutt). It never occurred to them that English was our primary language – even though we were in an English-speaking country.

Spending any time at all in Miami is like spending any time at all in any country besides the one where Miami is technically located.

What this all means, for the purposes of this blog, is that Miami sports fans do not necessarily have a strong commitment to rooting for the United States when the United States plays a Latin American country in a sporting event.

For example, right now the Miami Open tennis tournament is underway. It’s a Master’s 1000 event, meaning it’s one of the biggest tournaments of the year outside of the four Grand Slams. And you can be sure that if a player from Argentina or Brazil or Chile is playing someone from the USA, most of the crowd will be pulling for the player from Argentina, Brazil or Chile.

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And so it was in the World Baseball Classic. When the United States played (and beat) a powerhouse Dominican Republic team in the semifinals, the Miami crowd was very much rooting for the DR to win.

Naturally, the Miami crowd was pulling hard for Venezuela against the USA in the championship again. It was like a home game for Venezuela, even though technically they were the visiting team.

This would have been the case three years ago, or nine years ago. But this time it was magnified by a factor of 10. Because this time, the American team represented a country being led by a racist, 100% douchebag president who has made it his mission to punish brown-skinned people both at home and abroad.

He and his fascist, MAGA-stupid underlings have officially declared war on countries like Venezuela and Iran (and maybe Cuba next), while using a Gestapo-like paramilitary force to terrorize brown-skinned, mostly Spanish-speaking immigrants within our borders.

So when the USA faced off against Venezuela, there was added incentive to pull against the USA.

Adding fuel to the fire was the fact that 23 of the USA’s 25-team roster are youngish, 20- and 30-something white dudes – and if there is a demographic that fully embraces the MAGA mindset, it is youngish, 20- and 30-something white dudes. If not for them, the U.S. president would just be a washed-up reality TV star bankrupting companies and sexually assaulting women.

I’m pretty sure many of the American baseball players fully support the president. That’s just the way young white boys roll these days. Through his words and actions, the rich boy president gives every aggrieved-yet-privileged young white boy permission to be a raging dickhead – and they are 100% down with that.

I’m equally sure that many in the Miami crowd now oppose the president. That’s the case even though many probably voted for him in the last election, for reasons that will take decades to truly unravel. Personally, I will never, ever understand it.

But now they have a serious case of buyer’s remorse. Over the past year, they have seen the president and his thugs abuse and oppress their own people, and they’re righteously pissed off about it.

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If the heavily Hispanic Miami crowd were the only ones pulling against the USA on its own soil, in the sport it invented, this might not be much of a story. But plenty of other Americans were pulling against the USA as well. Including me — and I haven’t even seen the game yet.

This is a weird thing to admit, by the way. I usually pull for my home country, because of course I do. Of course I do. You do too, probably. Because why wouldn’t you?

But not now. I can’t pull for a team that embraces the very mindset that I despise to my core, and backs a president that I and most of the world cannot stand. I didn’t pull for the USA men against Canada in the Winter Olympics gold medal hockey game, either. I did pull for the women, because women seem to have more backbone than men when it comes to speaking out against tyranny.

When the president and his goons are finally gone, maybe I’ll go back to pulling for my home country in the sport it invented. Until then, I’ll cancel my support – and so will a lot of other Americans.

And by the way….

Venezuela won! In what apparently was a real dramatic affair.

I recorded it, and will watch it soon enough. I don’t care that I already know the result.

Because the joy will be in the watching.

Image: Venezuela celebrates, courtesy of the World Wide Web.