PHOENIX – The game is supposed to be America’s national pastime, but the United States has not fared well in the World Baseball Classic.
Joe Torre is putting his manager’s uniform back on to lead Team USA in this year’s competition, but he cautions that there are reasons the U.S. has not won, or even made it to the title game, in the first two editions of the worldwide competition.
Torre, speaking Monday at a news conference in Phoenix, said players usually use spring training to get ready physically for the long major league season, slowly working in the mental edge along the way. But with the World Baseball Classic, they are asked to get that competitive edge in a hurry against countries that take this competition very seriously.
“I think a big part of it is the mental preparation for a postseason type of atmosphere,” Torre said.
Japan won the first two championships, beating Cuba in the finale in 2006 and South Korea in 2009.
There is more than a little grumbling among managers who lose players for two or three weeks at a crucial time when they are supposed to be putting together a cohesive team for the coming big league season.
The team hit the hardest this year is the Milwaukee Brewers, who will lose 14 players during spring training, 11 of them from their 40-man roster.
“I get why a player would want to do it. I understand that,” Brewers manager Ron Roenicke said. “And we’re fine with them going and doing that, but it just happens that we’re getting hit with a lot of guys. We’re missing both catchers. It’s really important to us. We’ll just have to deal with it.”
Torre hasn’t managed since he retired from the Los Angeles Dodgers in 2010. He has no interest in the grind of another major league season in that job but he gladly will accept a three-week chore of running Team USA, jokingly comparing it to the role of a grandparent who after spoiling the kids gives them to their parents.
On a serious note, he recalled how he felt as New York Yankees manager in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
“This is going to be a similar emotion, but certainly not the sadness that was part of that,” he said. “But I think emotionally, once you put that uniform on, it’s responsibility. It’s not necessarily the winning part of it, I think it’s just the way you carry yourself and the way you go about it. The one thing I’ve preached to my players is you represent yourself and in this case you represent your country. And you certainly want to leave everybody a good taste in their mouth.”
The team to beat will be Japan.
Torre said that not only their ability, but the “discipline, the motivation, the whole nine yards, the way they go about it” makes the Japanese so good.
“The fact they rarely make mistakes,” he said. “Whatever sport you’re looking at it’s usually the team that makes the least mistakes that has the most success.”
Yes, he said, “Japan’s been the boss here the first two times, but in a short series, and I’m fortunate to have had the experience on the winning end and the losing end, anything can happen.”
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