You wake up in the dead of winter and look the world in the face. The muted horizon flashes the slow crawl of another endless winter through your mind. The inside of your car is an industrial freezer. Snowfall thickens as you grimace out the window at your freshly shoveled thoroughfare. Dogs poop generously in the snow, resulting in fecal discovery after fecal discovery as it melts.
This is a sunshineless funeral for the corpse of baseball. Like hibernating chiggers, we seek solace in pockets of warmth.
- They now offer the Fifth Third Burger in the shape of a heart, in order to indicate which of your critical organs it is torpedoing with nacho cheese.
- We’re finally fighting back against the computers with a rational measure of weaponry.
- The company behind such sports video game dynamos like Star Ocean, Dragon Quest, and Kingdom Hearts is producing a baseball game.
But for the most part, we struggle feverishly as winter calmly wraps around us, conditioning us to believe that being frigid and miserable is just a part of going outside.
At the same time, just a few quadrants closer to the Equator, the world is blessed in tropical breezes and living things that aren’t being forced into holes for an entire fourth of the calendar.
So of course, down there, they’re playing baseball. But this isn’t some wussy little one-country World Series.
Winter may be the time of year when we try to distract ourselves from the gaping baseball-hole in our schedules with things like football, other human beings, and whatever’s still in that flask you just found in your jacket pocket from that wedding. But there were plenty of recognizable faces and storylines flaunted throughout the Caribbean World Series that even an American viewer couldn’t feel disoriented.
You may only be familiar with the Caribbean as the latest example of America’s utter financial implosion. But for the past week, it was the arena for Mexico, Puerto Rico, Venezuela, and the Dominican Republic to have a crack at baseball glory. Each country is repped by whichever team emerged victorious from their respective Winter Leagues, with the Dominicans trying to defend their title from the previous year; but the colliding teams are comprised of dozens of individual threads.
Justin Cristian wanted to show up on somebody’s radar. Everth Cabrera was hoping to appear more than superfluous to a newly clogged Padres infield. Carlos Delgado, on loan to the Carlos Beltran Baseball Academy, was trying to talk his hip into functioning properly. Legends Roberto Alomar and Ivan Rodriguez were met with a sea of feverish applause and ceremonial first pitches (Alomar was welcomed into the Caribbean Hall of Fame as well).
This is where Julio Franco’s endless career goes on; though shockingly, as the manager of Venezuela, not a player. For some men, being 52 means automatically ruling out playing a pro sport, but with El Eterno, you can never be sure what he’s planning if you see him reaching for a bat.
But all of the pleasant temperatures and abbreviated responses came to a head yesterday, as the final day of the Series ticked down with four teams still contending–which in most leagues is not all that uncommon, but in the CWS, that accounts for 100% of the teams.
It was the surprising Mexicans who’d messed with the standings. In a tournament illustrated by thinly sliced one-run margins, representative team Yaquis de Obregon carved out some chunkier wins to claw to the top of the standings. Puerto Rico, hosting the event, proved to be their chief competition, while Venezuela disappointed and the Dominican’s aspirations of re-living 2010 quietly seemed to die. And yet, somehow, all of the teams found their last gasps of hope bursting into the final day.
There are no rehearsed, ambiguous answers in this World Series. The culture allows for the wall between players and media to be somewhat demolished. When the Dominicans faltered, their coach offered the following explanation:
"“I didn’t think we would play so bad.”"
A quadruple tie, with each team acquiring a 3-3 record, would have been possible, creating a cinematic aura of baseball drama usually not seen without a terrible script directed by Kevin Costner present. But then Mexico won, bringing their first championship since 2005, and it was over before anybody’s character arcs could gather steam. Yet the window into the game it provided was enough to remind us the game still exists.
If you Google “baseball” right now, here’s what you get:
- Premature predictions
- Trade analysis
- Stories about people attacking each other with bats
Midwinter can be bleak enough, with its chill factors and unfairly seductive Hulu offers. Taking a break from watching the days fall off the calendar until pitchers and catchers report and engaging in some actual baseball is an effective method of defrosting the mood. The Caribbean World Series stars its own collection of stories, history, and the legends who’ve built and continue to build them, providing a warm breath of fresh air to thaw out all those feelings of embittered madness slowly creeping in.
But most importantly, it features no heart-shaped sandwiches bent on slowly killing you.