Why Doesn't America Care?

Baseball is the Great American Past Time, and a game it may be more passionate about than any other (as is evidenced by all of the over reaction to the steroids and HGH stuff and yet no reaction about the exact same thing happening in football). So you'd think the good folks of the U-S-of-A would be fired up for the World Baseball Classic, pitting most of America's best against most of the rest of the world's best, right?

Nope. The PBA gets more attention from the American people, and media for that matter, than the WBC gets. In the Latin American countries participating, they're basically taking a national holiday for every game so everyone can watch. In Japan, they got 30,000 people out just to watch their team PRACTICE! In Canada, major league all-stars like Justin Morneau, Jason Bay, and Russell Martin have the country infected with baseball fever!!! Ok just kidding, Canadians still only care about hockey (because you don't know, I thought I'd fill you in: it's Trade Deadline Day in the NHL, which means in Canada, all three crappy sports networks are running non-stop TDD coverage from 8am EST till the deadline at 2pm. Seriously. All day.), but this actually leads me to a larger point: every country seems to have a sport that they're insane about when it comes to international competition-except the USA. My question is why?

Canada, as I've told you many times before, takes their interest in Canada competiting in international hockey events far beyond rabid, insane or intense. The identity of our entire country is tied into how we do at the Olympics, World Cup of Hockey, and the annual World Juniors (where we've won five straight gold). There's already an internet frenzy on who will be on Canada's Olympic team in Vancouver- which is still 11 MONTHS AWAY!!! ANd I am not immune to this, as I can't wait either, and will be watching every single Canada game-and every hockey game I can- of the Olympic tournament (I basically got fired from a job during the 2000 Olympics because I skipped work twice to watch Canada's games- and then a third time because somebody sprung tickets to the LAkers/Wolves game on me at the last minute. Literally, I'm grabbing my keys and about to head out the door to work, and a buddy calls and says "hey I have an extra ticket to see Shaq and Kobe. Game starts in two hours. Wanna go?" I thought about this for maybe 1.2 seconds-this was during the height of the Shaq/Kobe dynasty- before agreeing, then hung up, phoned into work sick for the 3rd time in two weeks, and went to the game. In truth, that was the first job I'd ever called in sick to when I wasn't, I hadn't signed up for shifts as I was planning to quit anyway, so really, what could they do?).

Ok so I guess that proves I hated that job and it didn't take much to for me to skip it once I started to, as much as I would have done ANYTHING to watch those Canada games!! The World Junior Tournament runs from Boxing Day (Dec 26th) till early January, and I watched the first couple of games while I was at home, then watched the rest on the interweb on tsn.ca. I'm beyond passionate about Canadian hockey, yet I could only be bothered to watch one period of the Canucks/Wild game last night. The international sport I just HAVE to watch is hockey, and it's the same for virtually every Canadian. As mentioned, in Japan and parts of Latin America like the Dominican Republic and Venezuala, it's baseball. Russia loves hockey, in Austrailia it's one of the long Olympic swimming races (I think it's the men's 1600 but I can't remember exactly. I just remember for one of the super long Olympic swimming races, the announcers said "this is bigger than the Super Bowl in Austrailia." Well there you go), in Norway it's cross country skiing (or maybe the one where you cross country ski THEN shoot something), in Austria it's downhill skiing, for India it's cricket, and in most of the rest of the world it's football, or as we'd say, soccer.

So why on earth is there not a sport that Americans get all fired up about internationally? I really would have thought baseball would be that sport, and you'd hear people debating things like whether Joe Mauer or Brian McCann should be catching or Jimmy Rollins or Derek Jeter should play short, or SOME big level of interest. Instead? Bubkis. I'll admit the WBC still has it's share of issues to work out, but I thought the idea of an international baseball competition would excite more people here in the US, yet it seems like folks could care less. Basketball is the third largest sport in America, and while people were upset when the once dominant Team USA started losing to Greece and Argentina and the Euro nations with 1/16th the talent, it wasn't the level of national crisis and epidemic like when Canada didn't medal in the 1998 Olympics for hockey, or when England doesn't qualify for the World Cup.

Maybe people here think it's pathetic or sad when a country puts that much of itself into how they fare in a sport in an international competition, but I happen to think it's healthy and great that we care that much. So for a country like America, whose citizens love their country and take pride in it as much or more than any other, and who love sports as much or more than any other, WHY don't they care about competiting in international events?

I just don't get it.