If the World Baseball Classic taught us anything about our “national pastime,” it might be that some other countries have a lot more fun playing baseball than we do.

Maybe it comes from having your country’s name on your uniform – especially for Latin players – but when Nelson Cruz hit that huge home run to help the Dominican Republic score a heart-stopping comeback victory over the United States in the first round, his joy was unrestrained and nobody in a Team USA jersey complained after the game that he was violating some stodgy unwritten code of conduct.

Eric Hosmer, left, and Nolan Arenado celebrate during the United States' 8-0 win over Puerto Rico in the 2017 World Baseball Classic on Wednesday. Robert Hanashiro/USA Today

Nobody said, “Hey Nelson, act like you’ve been there.” No one begrudged him or the Dominican fans for the excessive celebration of their magic Miami moment. But for some reason, it took a year to let go of Toronto Blue Jays outfielder Jose Bautista’s notorious bat flip in the 2015 playoffs.

Sure, there’s a difference. Bautista’s defiant reaction after his decisive home run in Game 5 of that American League Division Series against the Texas Rangers was an in-your-face, get-off-of-my-cloud eruption in a hotly contested and high-stakes game. Still, the backlash was way over the top.

Cruz’s immediate reaction had nothing to do with who his team was playing. It was all about his own team and his country, and it was so spontaneous, so jubilant and so sincere that anyone watching could identify with it. Team USA didn’t enjoy it very much, of course, but it was obvious during the tournament that even the American and Asian players were shedding their old-school inhibitions and joining in the fun.

Well, not entirely. Second baseman Ian Kinsler dropped an old-school rant about playing the game the right way before Team USA trounced Puerto Rico, 8-0, in the final on Wednesday night, but more than 50,000 fans didn’t pack Dodger Stadium to watch the players on either team look like they weren’t having a good time.

“I hope kids watching the WBC can watch the way we play the game and appreciate the way we play the game as opposed to the way Puerto Rico plays or the Dominican plays,” Kinsler told the New York Times. “That’s not taking anything away from them. That just wasn’t the way we were raised. They were raised differently and to show emotion and passion when you play. We do show emotion; we do show passion. But we just do it in a different way.”

Kinsler and his teammates certainly seemed to be having a great time when Adam Jones, Christian Yelich and a dozen or so teammates were running laps with the American flag after winning Team USA’s first WBC title.

To be fair, every team and nationality has its own way of displaying its passion for baseball. But the WBC creates a unique opportunity for that passion to cross cultural boundaries because so many American players and coaches with ancestral connections to other countries are able to take part in the event on those teams.

Major League Baseball has been trying for years to attract more young fans and make the sport more appealing to a generation of budding African-American athletes who have increasingly gravitated toward basketball and football. The result has been a solid effort to increase baseball opportunities for urban kids and all sorts of rules changes intended to shorten games and make them more television-friendly.

The celebratory atmosphere in the WBC games involving the Latin countries was infectious and added to the playoff-caliber drama even in the first round-robin pools.

Related Stories