World Champs?
With international talent on the rise, America's athletic arrogance grows increasingly irrelevant

By Jon Juliano
Collegian Staff
March 29, 2006

It’s a long fly ball down the left field line…it’s back, back, at the wall...it’s out of here! (Insert team here) are the world champions!

Almost every sports team uses the term “world champions.” In baseball, they play in the World Series. It seems a little strange, however, that a series that claims to include the entire world is only represented by two countries. Well, one country, really, and two teams from Canada.

The NBA is not much better. The San Antonio Spurs were the 2004-2005 world champions, but the only pro team located outside the United States is the Toronto Raptors, who are terrible. It’s very pompous (yet very American) to call ourselves world champions when the teams virtually never leave the country.

Thanks to the Second Amendment, the United States has the freedom to shoot itself in its bloody, white and blue foot when it enters events like the World Baseball Classic (WBC), or when NBA players enter the Olympics.

Baseball is known as America’s pasttime, which is interesting seeing as we lost to Canada and Mexico in the WBC. We had some of the richest, greatest athletes in our dugout: marquee names like Griffey, Jeter, Lee, Jones and Rodriguez. These names are slightly more recognizable than Team Canada notables like Pete Laforest and Ryan Radmanovich. And how could I forget Sebastian Boucher?

In 2004, NBA players traveled to the Athens games to truly compete against the world. Team USA came in second place, which is not bad except for the fact that everyone claimed we were going to blow every team out of the water and earn gold with ease. We went 5-3, losing to teams like Argentina and Lithuania.

Not even reaching the semifinals in the WBC is not a big deal, but boy, do our feet hurt after sending a bullet through it.

I think the National Hockey League does the best job curbing American arrogance, due largely to its multi-national players and the fact that winners are called Stanley Cup champs, and not world champs. It also seems as though hockey is the most competitive and most exciting world sport because Americans are usually underdogs and usually lose, which is much better than being the favorite and choking.

Solutions to this problem, for the sake of America’s little piggies, could be to make a professional league involving more countries, or stop saying “world champions,” because it is extremely shameful for Team USA to lose to Canada and Mexico in a sport we call our pasttime.

julianoj3@lasalle.edu