Béisbol, anyone?

The inaugural World Baseball Classic (WBC), the Major League Baseball-sponsored tournament that serves as the sport’s version of the World Cup, will soon conclude, but given the abysmal attendance figures—at least, when Latin teams are not playing—one could say that it had concluded before it began. American interest in the WBC has been about as spotty as the American side’s performance in the tournament. With many of its best players sitting it out, Team USA has not been particularly impressive, and as of this posting, risks being eliminated early should Japan defeat Korea this evening.

It’s hard to say whether stateside interest will pick up if the Americans prolong their stay in the field, but the only people heralding the start of a great new sporting event tend to be a few media folks and the players themselves (at least, those who participated). It should come as no surprise that Americans tend to be pretty provincial with its sporting culture. We tend to play games no one else does and blow our own contests far out of proportion (The World Series, for example, having always been anything but). For many Americans, there were more passionate and lachrymose moments to be found in the NCAA basketball tournament’s play-in game between mighty Monmouth College and Hampton University than in seeing the world’s greatest baseball players congregate for a worldwide tournament. Why the lack of American interest in America’s pastime?

Part of the blame can be chalked up to marketing gaffes. ESPN, the American all-sports television network, has been blamed by some for poor scheduling and promotion, and certainly, a visit to its website’s home page seems to confirm this. You actually have to surf around a bit to find a link to its WBC coverage, when there should be hot buttons all over the page. A visit to Yahoo! Sports reveals the same lack of interest. The featured picture is a collegian shooting a basketball. There is even a highlighted box with spring training news, but no mention of the WBC. You have to click through the site’s Major League Baseball link in order to get to the WBC. How about CBS’s Sportsline? Same result, although, as the NCAA basketball tournament’s television broadcaster, one wouldn’t expect anything different from CBS. Clearly, despite earning plaudits from a few pundits, such as Yahoo!’s Jeff Passan, coverage of the Classic as it unfolds has been underwhelming, and one can’t help but feel that to be a failure of marketing in many respects.

A second, and perhaps more damning, explanation is competition. While holding the Classic during spring training is an excellent fit for Major League Baseball, it pits the Classic against what is probably the most watched and popular sporting event in the US, the aforementioned NCAA basketball tournament, which begins in earnest tomorrow. And for two weeks leading up to the NCAAs, there are a score of smaller conference tournaments, many of which determine the field for the 65-team national tournament, and these tournaments, too, generate a great deal of sporting interest. In short, no one really pays attention to college basketball until March rolls around, and then they make up for it with a flurry of late-week sick days and weekend stupors. If sports fans are willing to risk the ire of spouses and bosses to watch their beloved basketball tournament, they’re certainly not going to make baseball a high priority.

But it needn’t always be like this. The WBC might eventually find a place in our sporting culture, but if it does so, it wouldn’t be through the stereotypically overweight white male sitting on his couch with remote in hand. While American interest in the Classic has been lukewarm, overseas it is already a tremendous hit, especially with Latino audiences. Interest in East Asia, particularly Japan and Korea, has also been high. Some Latin fans have gone so far as to offer unctuous thank-yous to MLB for sponsoring the event, and more so than not, it has been Mexicans, Dominicans, Puerto Ricans, Venezuelans, Panamanians and Cubans (or Americans of said extraction) filling the stadiums, buying the merchandise, and religiously following their national teams. Seeing Latinos sporting WBC hats and t-shirts is already commonplace in New York City.

The level of excitement that the Latin audience brings to the event can be infectious. It only takes an elevator ride to sense the impact the event is making, even in the transplanted national communities as far a field as New York. Over time, this excitement might find its way into the Yankee redoubts that normally save its baseball swagger for October.