World Cup fever reaches MLB
I’ll never forget the FIFA World Cup in 2014 because the opening day fell on my birthday. I couldn’t have asked for a better gift that year. I remember I was in Los Angeles for a work event with Univision. You could feel the energy of the World Cup even though it was being played more than 6,000 miles away in Brazil.
People on the street were wearing jerseys from their home country. Bars and restaurants had signs inviting fans to come in and watch the games. Televisions were playing highlights from prior World Cups in anticipation of the start of the 2014 opener. I like to tell people, “The world was celebrating two things that day – my birthday and the start of the World Cup.”
Fast forward to March 2017, when the World Baseball Classic would make its fourth appearance on the international sports stage. Founded in 2005, the WBC was started by Major League Baseball in conjunction with the Major League Baseball Players Association. It was sanctioned by various international baseball associations after the International Olympic Committee removed baseball and softball from the Olympics in 2005.
The international sporting event would also be played every four years, just like the quadrennial FIFA World Cup.
Until last year, the only reason I vaguely remembered the 2013 WBC was because the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico played against each other in the championship game. Last year, when we started La Vida Baseball it coincidentally coincided with the start of the WBC. When I asked my friends and family if they were going to watch the WBC, most didn’t even know the WBC even existed. At the time, I thought to myself, “Why don’t more people know about the WBC?”
At the same time, I wondered if I could really compare the popularity of the FIFA World Cup to the WBC, knowing the World Cup has been around longer and, in my opinion, soccer is more popular worldwide. After working in the baseball media world and seeing the growing popularity of baseball at the international level, I now wonder if the WBC can ever be as big as the World Cup.
White Sox pitcher Miguel González, who also played for Team Mexico during the 2017 WBC, offered his thoughts on the WBC.
“The fact that we can play [baseball] every year, I think [the WBC] should be played every year instead of every four years,” González said.
Knowing soccer is popular in Mexico, I also asked González what sport he thinks is more popular, soccer or baseball.
“There’s a lot more soccer fans, I think,” he said. “Just the fact that there’s not a lot of Mexicans that play here in the states in the big leagues. There’s definitely fans that follow us as well, but I think there’s more on the soccer side.”
In 2014, Mexico’s first World Cup game fell on a Friday at 1 p.m. La Huasteca, the restaurant at the popular Plaza Mexico in the Los Angeles suburb of Lynwood, was packed. People had been lined up since 9 a.m. just to get inside to secure a seat in front of one of the big screens. for the 1 p.m. kickoff.
I remember asking people if they had taken the day off to watch the game, and most said they had requested the day off months ago knowing Mexico was going to play in the middle of the day during the week. I was interested to see if González had friends and family who would take work off to watch him play in the WBC.
“Not really,” he said, “but if they can catch the Mexican WBC game they are going to do it and have a party.”
So, can and will the WBC ever be as big as the World Cup? In time, yes.
The World Cup was founded 88 years ago. The WBC was founded only 13 years ago. What would need to happen in order for the WBC to reach the pinnacle of the World Cup? Should they play it during the regular season? Expand to more countries? Play every year, as Gonzalez suggests? The WBC is still a very young organization. MLB has the ability and, most importantly, the flexibility to test various versions of the WBC in order to find the right formula to get the WBC to compete with the popularity of the World Cup.
It won’t happen overnight. It’s going to take a while. How long? Only time will tell.
For now, at this very moment, I am going to enjoy the fact that two sporting events I love, the baseball season and the World Cup are going on at the same time. I’ll root for Los Gigantes of San Francisco and Mexico’s El Tri.
Featured Image: Michael Steele / Getty Images Sport