I’m still processing my otherworldly weekend at the World Baseball Classic, where I was fortunate enough to see the unlikely Venezuelan takeover of the Group of Death for this year’s tournament. The Venezuela squad stormed to wins against a Dominican Republic team that can casually be described as all stars and superstars behind phenomenal pitching before running that same script back on an almost as stacked Puerto Rico team. That allowed Venezuela to run the table in Miami pool play and set up a winner-take-all game between the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico.
That game between the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico was the greatest game of baseball I’d ever seen prior to the last week of baseball (more on that in a second) and it convinced me definitively that MLB does not need bigger bases, a pitch clock, or shift rules — it needs bat flips, celebrations, bands in the stands and children cheering for them in the streets.