Wow, nobody bothered to post about the historic undefeated run the Dominican made throughout this tournament? They ended up beating Puerto Rico three times! It woulda been funny if Puerto Rico won despite losing 2/3 games to the Dominican Republic.

My shock is highlighted by the fact that last night on ESPNRadio's broadcast of the final Chris Singleton said that winning a WBC is "probably bigger than winning a World Series" which perfectly bookended the hyperbole train that was started by Rick Sutcliffe on the ESPNAmerica telecasts when he stopped just short of calling Mexico's win over the United States their most important victory since the Alamo. He was also calling at bats in that game "the biggest at bats in [MLB Player]'s life" and whatnot.

So what have we learned from the WBC? Not much. Team USA would win by default if it was seen as some OMFG HUUUUUUUUGE NATIONAL PRIDE THING like we're repeatedly told that it is for every other country, which I'll buy somewhat since these smaller/non-MLB-having-countries probably do have something to prove since they wanna show off that they're THE BEST IN THE WORLD.... that is, before CM Punk comes out to formally refute their claim and then Jericho is like "heyyy wait a minute" and then someone goes to Bret Hart and he's still going on and on from the last interview about how HHH is mediocre.

That, and we learned that there's prolly an edict from MLB that everyone covering it goes out of their way to remind the audience how important that this thing is. In today's ubiquitous mass/media-propagated culture, all you have to do is start saying something and introduce it to the digital/echo-chamber and synthesize the projection and then it eventually becomes reality. That's clearly the case, as everyone on board from the announcers all the way down to the Phil Rogers types are in lockstep when they tell you that this is the greatest tournament ever (despite the obvious flaws) and everyone who plays in it loves it and wants to come back and then the piece de resistance: winning the WBC is bigger than winning the world series.

That said, will ESPN 8 "The Ocho" cover the parades and celebrations in the Dominican Republic for winning this? Or instead will it just be a giant universal shoulder-shrugging "meh" before 30 teams around the league rejoice that their talent can now get their asses back to Florida/Arizona and focus on their real jobs? Methinks it's that.

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I enjoyed the baseball and look forward to it next time around.

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2018
#ExtendLafleur
10 More Wins