![]() Like that scrappy team of Puerto Rican basketball players did in 2004 when it defeated the USA’s Dream Team in the Olympics. If it weren’t for players born elsewhere, American baseball would have died years ago. In addition, the world’s best player is Japan’s Shohei Ohtani, who has dazzled WBC fans with brilliant power and a 102-mph fastball. At the start of the 2022 season, more than 28% of major-league rosters were made up of players who were born outside the U.S., including the Caribbean, Latin America and Asia. Love of baseball in places such as Puerto Rico gave birth to the international stars who’ve helped resuscitate major-league baseball. And not only Puerto Ricans, but every player in the WBC considers being here the ultimate honor.” "It is the dream of every Puerto Rican ballplayer to wear Puerto Rico’s colors and to represent our country. But while for so many people the regular season is what counts, playing in the WBC means just as much to all of us. Marly Rivera of ESPN reported Thursday that Francisco Lindor, the captain of the Puerto Rican team and Diaz's Mets teammate, said this about the criticisms of Diaz playing, "I understand how Mets fans are hurting. And not just to Puerto Ricans, but also to Dominicans, Cubans, Mexicans, Venezuelans, Japanese, Taiwanese and Koreans. There’s no need to explain why those remarks are awful, but some may believe Olbermann’s tweet was offensive only because of the vulgarity and agree with him that the World Baseball Classic is meaningless. Such a view betrays no understanding of what baseball and the WBC mean to Puerto Ricans. “Make it ‘where their ancestors got laid.’ That blunt description of the artificiality of the team assignments is also trivial and for that I apologize.” “Ok, it reads sexist and for that I apologize,” he tweeted Thursday afternoon. ![]() There may have been no uglier response to Diaz’s injury than the one from Keith Olbermann, a longtime former MSNBC host, who tweeted: “The WBC is a meaningless exhibition series designed to: get YOU to buy another uniform, to hell with the real season, and split up teammates based on where their grandmothers got laid.”
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