As baseball becomes a global game, WBC is giving some St. Louis Cardinals global celebrity
Shortly after 5:30 a.m. Thursday in St. Louis, Lars Nootbaar stepped to the plate at the sold-out Tokyo Dome to hit for Team Japan in their opening round matchup with Team China.
Behind him, a substantial portion of the more than 50,000 fans in attendance could be heard chanting rhythmically — “LARS, LARS, TAT-SU-JI.”
The scene, tough to catch unless you also keep arguably obscene sleeping hours, was a distillation of the appeal of the World Baseball Classic. America’s pastime is a global game, and players find stardom on stages which they may not otherwise have been able to access.
For Nootbaar, born to an American father of Dutch descent and a Japanese mother, his western first name and eastern middle name caught on as the basis of a personalized chant. The other members of Samurai Japan each have their own, especially if you include the awed silence which spills forth from the broadcast any time the action approaches Shohei Ohtani.
Nootbaar, though, remains a unique case.
As the first member of the Japanese national team to be born outside of Japan, he’s become an instant celebrity. Play-by-play broadcaster Steven Nelson relayed a story on MLB Network earlier this week of Nootbaar being flooded by fans seeking autographs and attention merely as he stepped out of his hotel to grab snacks at a convenience store.
The pepper grinding gesture which he made popular at the end of the 2022 season — players should grind out at bats, as the metaphor goes — has become a calling card of the Japanese team in the tournament’s early going, and has spilled over accordingly to the fan base. One popular clip online showed a Japanese news broadcast focusing their cameras on a team of little leaguers in uniform, each of whom was eagerly copying their new favorite player, non-Ohtani division.
Exposure for Nootbaar’s teammates has perhaps not been quite as readily apparent, but the opportunities for each to make a name for himself on a global stage are abundant.
Tommy Edman hit leadoff and played second base for Korea in their stunning opening loss to Australia, becoming, like Nootbaar, the first non-native to play for that national team. His own middle name, Hyunsyu, was integrated into his jersey’s nameplate just as that of his teammates; expect to see “T H Edman” jerseys at Busch Stadium this summer.
Andre Pallante provided two shutout innings for Italy in their first action of the tournament, an extra innings victory over Cuba. Miles Mikolas started the exhibition against the San Francisco Giants for the Americans, and Paul Goldschmidt homered in a 5-1 loss.
From Génesis Cabrera (Dominican Republic) and Giovanny Gallegos (Mexico) proudly posing in their national colors on Instagram to Matt Koperniak and Joseph King get a shot to significantly outdistance their prospect projections while playing for Great Britain, the enthusiasm among players for the tournament is palpable.
Similar energy to World Cup
That’s why, despite the stress the tournament puts on big league teams and the dread that coaches and front offices will endure until their players are returned to camp in full health, the excitement over the WBC’s start is overwhelming.
Even those of us who aren’t up in the pre-dawn to catch live action from Japan and Taiwan should be able to appreciate the excitement of the closest approximation to a best-on-best international baseball tournament that’s been played in the last six years.
The WBC doesn’t yet have the cache of soccer’s World Cup, but the action will have similar energy. If the Japanese fans seemed enthused in Tokyo, imagine the scenes to come in Miami when Puerto Rico (managed by Yadier Molina) or the Dominican Republic take the field.
American baseball fans tend to measure successes by World Series championships, and the goings on around the globe can feel difficult to penetrate. Save for broadcasts from Korea in the early days of the pandemic, Asia’s professional leagues have never been particularly accessible to American viewers, and the learned rhythms of the calendar make it challenging to keep up with winter leagues which are prominent throughout Latin America.
More about WBC
The WBC provides an opportunity to get a glimpse at those various styles and skill levels and measure them against each other. China’s players, by and large, stood very little chance of even making contact against Ohtani. The Czech roster is comprised of various day laborers who play in adult recreational leagues with former MLB utility man Eric Sogard at the center. The Americans, the defending champions, somehow return only two players to their roster from the 2017 Classic — Nolan Arenado and Goldschmidt, now there as teammates.
And yet Australia’s victory over Korea, especially if it propels them out of the group stage, stands a chance to be remembered as one of the most significant upsets in the history of that country’s athletics. It has the potential to capture the attention and affections of untold players who might now seek the game out despite never having had serious interest. It’s a springboard, an opportunity.
That’s the WBC at its best. That’s what makes it worth the stress, the risk, and the early mornings. And, if you’re Lars Nootbaar, you just might pick up a little fame and fortune along the way.