Ian Kinsler doesn’t seem to understand the purpose of the WBC

Ian Kinsler wishes Team Puerto Rico played the game the right way instead of having so much darn fun.

There have been nothing but good vibes out of the 2017 World Baseball Classic leading up to the final on Wednesday night. Record-breaking crowds have turned out to watch the games all over the world, Latin American fans are packing bars back home to watch their countrymen, and there have been way too many iconic moments for baseball in March. This WBC has been a delight from the first pitch all the way up to the end.

Everything about the WBC has been fun. From the bleached hair of Team Puerto Rico, to Adam Jones robbing teammate Manny Machado of a home run in epic fashion, to vuvuzelas and drums inside the stadium. There have been long home runs, intense moments and non-stop highlight reel defense in every game. I’ll repeat myself. It’s been a hell of a lot of fun.

Ian Kinsler doesn’t seem to have gotten the memo. Speaking with the New York Times before the title game, Kinsler dumped a giant bucket of ice water on whatever good will had been building throughout the tournament.

"“I hope kids watching the W.B.C. can watch the way we play the game and appreciate the way we play the game as opposed to the way Puerto Rico plays or the Dominican plays,” Kinsler said. “That’s not taking anything away from them. That just wasn’t the way we were raised. They were raised differently and to show emotion and passion when you play. We do show emotion; we do show passion. But we just do it in a different way.”"

Kinsler comes off as the Ugly American who struggles to identify with other cultures. He is not alone in Major League Baseball, where it is still frowned upon to show much more than a passing burst of emotion after a win. Just put your head down, run the bases, and act like you’ve been there before. It’s a stark contrast to the way baseball is played in every other country in the world.

The World Baseball Classic is meant to bring together every baseball-playing nation in the world, precious few that there actually are. It’s meant to be an event where cultures are shared. Americans were able to see the carnival-like atmosphere that comes with Dominican baseball fans in Miami. More than anything else, the WBC should be a time to celebrate the fact that millions of people around the world love the game of baseball, regardless of how they choose to play it.

Much of the focus on this year’s tournament, great as it has been, has been the perceived lack of interest in the USA. We may not care much about the outcome of the WBC in this country, but it is the Super Bowl, Rose Bowl, Indy 500 and Kentucky Derby all rolled up into one for places like Japan and the Dominican Republic.

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Baseball is fun, and it should be played however one sees fit. If you are a more buttoned-up personality, so be it. If you are a ball of white-hot energy like Javy Baez, more power to you. This outdated, my-way-or-the-highway line of thinking about the game has almost worked its way out of power, but every now and then players like Ian Kinsler pop up to remind us there’s still a few holdouts left waiting to be pulled into the 21st Century.