Yes, the WBC is a big deal

 Sometimes all you have to do is ask an honest question to get an honest answer. Even when it's a question people think you're asking facetiously, because who doesn't know the answer to THAT?

This happened the other day after I read Keith Olbermann's dopey tweet about the World Baseball Classic, which is back again this year and has cost the Mets the services of their ace closer, Edwin Diaz. Playing for Puerto Rico, Diaz came on to douse the Dominican Republic's final embers in a 5-2 upset, then tore his patellar tendon jumping up and down with his teammates in celebration. He's out for the season.

It was an awful and bizarre accident, which means it just as easily could have happened in a spring training game or while stepping off a curb to cross the street. Olbermann, however, despises the WBC, and so he used it as an opening to call for the WBC to be shut down.

It was a ridiculously over-the-top take. But the Blob responded by asking if anyone really cares about the WBC, because the Blob really wanted to know.

Turns out they do care. Like, a lot.

In Japan, I was informed, the WBC puts up viewership numbers that dwarf those of the World Series. Hundreds of thousands of fans flock to the games in other baseball-crazy locales. The WBC, I was informed over and over, is a huge big deal in countries outside the United States.

Which of course is why I didn't know all this.

Provincialism being what it is, I'm an American, and apparently Americans are the least enthused about the WBC. We don't care much about it, and that means, in that annoyingly American way, we think it isn't important. 

Well, it is. And after I asked my question, and after I got flooded with responses, I realized the answer was right in front of me all along.

I remembered that, not a week ago, I went to a local sports bar to eat lunch and watch some college buckets. It was the weekend of the big conference tournaments, so there were a few of us glued to the bigger screens.

Not the guy I sat next to, though.

His attention was riveted on one of the smaller screens, where Puerto Rico was playing Colombia in the WBC. He was from Puerto Rico, it turns out, and so he was there to root on the mother country. They might as well have been playing all those basketball games on the moon for all he cared.

"My alltime favorite baseball player was Puerto Rican," I told him. "Roberto Clemente."

A knowing smile.

"Ah, yes," he said. "Clemente."

And then turned back to watch the next pitch.