Opening day of the World Baseball Classic for Team USA, baseball’s equivalent of the World Cup, the stacked line-up for the USA took to the field in Houston. Before the outfielders took their positions, the superstars got together and revealed their new “celebration” — a synchronized military salute.
The salute is led by — and as a die-hard Yankees fan, this really hurts me to say — “Captain America” Aaron Judge, who has repeatedly propagandized for the military to the media in the run-up to the classic. The devout Christian seems to forget to love his neighbors when the warhounds begin to bark.
A spin on a celebration that Kyle Schwarber began in 2017, it’s one of many examples of the militarized coding of Team USA. Sports are never just games. They are reflections of the cultures that play them — and our mirror is beginning to shatter.
Throughout the classic, Team USA repeatedly embarrassed itself on the world stage, mirroring a society that is entering an era of humiliation.
A few games in, Cal Raleigh showcased American values. Arriving at the plate in a game against Mexico, his Seattle Mariners teammate Randy Arozarena greeted him with a friendly fist bump that Cal disrespectfully rejected on national television.
This led to a heated Arozarena giving an all-time quote to the press after the game, translated from multiple languages: “I’ll tell it to him Cuban-style. What he needs to do is go f— himself. Mexican-style: he can go f— himself. And in English, I’m gonna say it to him in English. That ‘good to see you’ he gave me? He can shove it up his a–.”
We can say it’s simply competitive spirit, but the message to the world is clear. Americans are ruthless losers who are willing to disparage their friends and allies whenever their political incentives align.
In another display of embarrassment, Team USA was at risk of not advancing from the pool stage after losing to much lower-quality Team Italy. This loss raised the ire of fans, as it was clear that manager Mark DeRosa didn’t know the tournament rules, and erroneously believed the team had already advanced — building the game plan to let star players rest, as if the result didn’t matter.
To cap it all off, mere minutes before the first knock-out round against Canada, Team USA welcomed ex-Navy SEAL Rob O’Neill to their locker room to recount his involvement in the execution of Osama bin Laden as a “motivational speaker.”
O’Neill claims to have been the man to shoot bin Laden — although a fellow SEAL Team 6 member said his story is “complete BS.” He’s now a far-right extremist who spreads vile bigotry against transgender people, once tweeted that young Kamala Harris voters should be his “concubines” and has called the illegal abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro “really cool … Hollywood movie stuff.”
In a recent segment on far-right media channel NewsNation, O’Neill praised the horrific military strikes in Iran and complained of “anti-nuke people saying they want Iran to keep nukes because they hate Donald Trump so much … the biggest fight we’re fighting is against the left in this country.” Boy, he would hate my last article: Iran Should Have Nuclear Weapons.
That Team USA would welcome this man into its locker room with open arms is revealing of a culture so deeply deprived that tales of imperial death are seen as motivational and fascists are welcomed as heroes.
And the contrast to other nations is so clear. The media stories coming from teams like Venezuela and the Dominican Republic are those of familial bonds and vibrant cultural energy. Baseball social media was inundated with comparisons of the “vibes matchup” for Sunday’s fixture between the DR and USA. An X user compared it to the difference between “the best party you’ve ever been to versus renewing your license at the DMV.”
Watching the game against the DR Sunday night — which Team USA ultimately won from a horribly called strike three outside of the zone, from an American umpire — I found myself rooting against them. Not out of conscious protest but from natural internal shame. I’m embarrassed to be an American, and I’m embarrassed to be represented by such a humiliating display of depravity.
The whole situation is emblematic of a much-deserved, larger decline in American cultural relevance and respect on the world stage. As Iran holds strong on their closure of the Strait of Hormuz and influential nations like Spain and Colombia distance themselves from U.S.-Israeli hegemony, we find ourselves within an empire in rapid decline.
Team USA is bloodthirsty, pathetic and embarrassing — reflective of a bloodthirsty, pathetic and embarrassing nation.
More than a century of imperial atrocities and domestic neglect has left American culture thoroughly saturated with cognitive dissonance and fundamentally empty of value or moral consciousness. Like a top stumbling to a halt, our social balance is erratic and off-camber. We are through the doorstep into an era of American humiliation.
