The World Baseball Classic has a gay dance party vibe, but Team USA didn’t get the memo

Welcome back to Talkin’ Gaysball where we’ll buy a ticket to any game that features a list of permissible musical instruments…

If you’ve ever beheld the ecstatic response on the dance floor when the opening chant to “Abracadabra” bursts through the speakers, you know what it sounds like to watch the World Baseball Classic.

One of the most profoundly moving experiences of the WBC is losing yourself in pure unfettered emotion as many different cultures show off how they express baseball joy.

Venezuela turns into an army of Sheila E clones as drums and percussion instruments pulse throughout the ballpark for the duration of the entire game — sometimes in their team’s dugout as well.

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Japan breaks out personalized and choreographed chants for each player in the lineup, coordinated in rhythm to the player’s name. The sound of the Tokyo Dome’s cheering section is approximately what would happen if an American team signed a player named Jake Hottogo. Times nine.

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Then there’s the Dominican Republic, which puts on a full-on production number for every home run celebration. 

From Junior Caminero and Manny Machado performing a “Hips Don’t Lie” dance at home plate to LGBTQ ally Julio Rodríguez trying to flip his bat to loanDepot Park’s upper deck to a teamwide pantomime selfie in front of the dugout, the least exciting part of a DR homer might be hitting a ball 450 feet.

There are Broadway musicals with less intricate choreography than a Dominican home run. And I’m pretty sure “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark” opened and closed faster than it took Caminero to circle the bases.

Spellbinding moments like these happen multiple times every day during the WBC and it’s hard not to get swept up in all the feels — especially for an oh-so-dramatic baseball gay.

Then there’s Team USA.

It’s a different vibe in the stands when the United States takes the field. There’s an enthusiastic atmosphere but it also carries an undercurrent of “you’d better win so we can get to shoving it in this other country’s face.”

The closest that the stands in a USA Baseball game get to the party atmosphere in other countries is the reliable “USA USA USA!” cheer. But as much as we’d like to pretend that “USA” chants are good old fashioned earnest patriotism, there’s no denying that given current events, it’s impossible to separate that sound from the ugly nationalism it so often accompanies.

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During Team USA’s squash match with Great Britain, U.S. partisans also lustfully booed anyone in wearing a Union Jack as if Team GB’s leadoff homer was responsible for reinstituting the Stamp Act.

Compared to the rest of the tournament, the only joy U.S. fans seem to get is the winning part. When the WBC begins, we become an entire nation of Yankee fans. Literally.

Don’t get me wrong. I will happily watch and cheer for Kyle Schwarber showing what happens to a baseball when it forgets the safe word seven days a week and twice on Sundays.

But it’s also hard to ignore Paul Skenes’ WBC mission statement going into the tournament: “We’re America, we’ve got to assert our dominance over everybody else. That’s what we do. It’s going to be fun.”

If Skenes was trying to convince baseball fans that he and his teammates were capable of matching the DR or Venezuela for fun, perhaps he should’ve put more than 11 words between it and “assert our dominance.”

It was also telling that during the USA/Mexico game on Monday night, Fox’s Joe Davis and Ken Rosenthal dedicated an inning of WBC analysis that essentially boiled down to “Guys, the U.S. players can totally be fun too, we swear!”

On the scale of desperately trying to convince us to ignore our lyin’ eyes, it was somewhere between Frasier Crane’s “I am running with scissors” and Bruno Kirby’s “Sir, in my heart, I know I’m funny.”

So yes, the United States has one of the most talent-packed rosters in the WBC. If you watch any game involving Team USA, it’s impossible to deny that their brilliance could carry them to the gold medal.

But when it comes to symbolizing what makes this incredible celebration of global baseball so special, they wouldn’t make it out of pool play.

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