It was on BBC this morning in the states, with the English accents and all....they called it our version of the WC. So yeah, they probably don't know much about what they were talking about....
So what basis should we use? Club teams are not the standard. National teams are. Who has the most hardware for what is now considered the premier competition for baseball? That would be Japan.
Indeed. As with football, as a national team you have to play with the hand you have been dealt, unlike club teams that buy themselves into glory. So you can try to outsmart a team that has better players.
True story. Argentina isn't the #1 ranked team in the world right now. So they're holding the trophy, but not the best team in the world according to the FIFA rankings. And I'm sure nobody in Argentina cares.
I mean, I'm not really interested in a long discussion here because it's all semantics. Japan won the WBC. Great. Does it matter what "the best baseball nation is?" Not really, but if we're talking about who produces the most and best players, that's still the US. If we're talking about who has the strongest culture per capita, maybe it is Japan or the Dominican. It's a silly thing to argue because most of the argument is in the definition. But if you wanted to say who would win a league of national teams with all talent over a sample size large enough to determine these things in baseball... it's going to be the US the majority of the time. The Dominican is up there right now, Japan is very good, Puerto Rico has a nice team. But the US would have the most talent, and over a 162 game season, wins. And if you did it 10,000 times, it probably goes USA - DR - Japan or something like that. (Baseball isn't really even a team sport in the sense that the players don't really interact nearly as much as in soccer -- there's very little sense of pieces fitting together, etc.) I'm perfectly fine saying Japan won the WBC and I actually assign value to that. But that's what it means. Heck, the World Cup is probably a better measure of the best team in soccer, since like, no one really turns down an invite, but is anyone saying "Argentina is the best soccer nation in the World?" I haven't seen it. It's enough to win the World Cup, and it's enough to call them the World Cup Champions. Their team was better than France's at that moment in time. Now take that, and realize that for many top baseball players, they think of the World Cup like people here think of CONCACAF Nations League or something. And for others, it's really important. When was the last time a World Cup favorite had half of their roster invites basically turn them down?
What matters in any title race is who show up and take up the gloves. Nobody can claim to be the best by staying home (the players that is). You only prove it by going into the contest and beat the opponent. You can be the number 1 in the chess ratings, but if you choose not to participate in matches anymore, you can't claim your the best anymore. Claims don't count, results do.
Eh, the best players are still playing in the competitions they care about. You're welcome to take this sort of macho attitude about it, but I guarantee you all the players know it's not the same as if people like Verlander or DeGrom showed it. It's on a different scale, but your comment is like saying that when the US lost in the Olympics in Men's Basketball in 1988 sending college kids, that the other countries were better "basketball countries." Yeah, everyone knew the pros would wax them. If someone started up a new Speedskating Classic and invited everyone, but the top Dutch skaters were like, hey, that prize money's not enough or we don't need another event ... I wouldn't act like whoever won their was better than the Dutch. The actual players know the score. It's only fans who act like this.
Dunno about those college kids you mention. I guess that in the US pro basketball league the best players from over the world are gathered. From the line ups of the FIBA gold medal winners of Spain and former Yougoslavia a big part of them were from the NBA clubs. It's not like the other countries were/are only sending their home league players. Were these college kids too?
The 1988 US team was all college kids, yes. The other teams could send pros. They had grown ass adults. I'm not sure how that's hard to understand. It actually takes a shocking amount of effort to not get that. We did not send pros until 1992, and only lost twice -- in 1972, when it was pretty much rigged for the Soviets, and in 1988, when the world was absolutely catching up. Prior WBCs, by the way, have been like this. The US team that won in 2017 had a few good players but also some guys who are not good at all. Not B team players, but really shouldn't be considered. The 2004 team was different. The rest of the world had improved and the 2004 team was roughly a C team with the vast majority of the A level talent being rookies. I believe Emeka Okafor started some games. Hence the 2008 redeem team. After losing, we sent the A team again and whooped everyone. No one in the US cares about the FIBA World Championships, so those squads tend to be not very good. We'll lose another one soon -- the world has caught up at least in terms of a Top 5-8 and frankly, FIBA basketball is super erratic because the 3pt line is child's play. But the 1988 one? No, that's because we sent 18 years and everyone else sent their best. --------- In 2009, the US beat Spain in the Confederations Cup and finished second. At no point in time did I ever think the US was "a better soccer nation" or that our team was #2 in the world or that even that our team was actually better than that Spain team. We won on that day, in that moment. And that's great. I take nothing from it. And both those teams brought their A teams! Unlike the scenario we are talking here. We beat them. And if we have turned around and played the next day and I have to place a bet, I would have picked Spain 100 times out of 100.