The World Baseball Classic Is Already Producing Some Classic World Baseball

For my money, the best part of any World Baseball Classic is not the back end of the tourney, when the field has been whittled to the world's best and the level of play is immaculate. Sure, there's some good baseball there, and high drama, and it's where bragging rights truly get parceled out as the sport's superpowers face each other: your Japans, your DRs, your USAs. No, pool play is where the most fun is to be found. Think of it like the opening weekend of March Madness, where the draw is not necessarily greatness, but joy: teams who have little business holding their own against the titans and doing it anyway; getting to learn about the quirks and traditions of those more obscure teams; heavy-traveling fans who make a neutral site feel like a home game; feeling, secondhand but unmistakable, the pride players take in wearing their colors. With so much baseball going on at the same time, it all just kind of washes over you in a pleasant cultural stew. There's the Emperor of Japan attending an international baseball game for the first time in nearly 60 years. There's the Italians drinking espresso in the dugout. There's Luis Arraez inexplicably turning into Barry Bonds, but once again only for a WBC. There is cool and/or weird shit going on at basically any moment; it is, like baseball itself, best consumed in bulk. And yet, in the five previous editions of the Classic, one not-uncommon thing had somehow never happened even once: a walk-off home run, that purest of baseball joys. On Saturday we got two, and if you're still a little cynical about this tournament or feel like it's not taken as seriously as it could be, this is the stuff you'd want to distill and bottle.