The Geopolitics of Baseball: Why Mainstream Sports Coverage Misses the Pitch
To the editors and readers of Newsweek regarding your recent piece, "Paul Skenes Makes Honest Admission After USA's WBC Win Over Dominican Republic": While your report focuses on the athlete's personal reflections on teamwork and pressure, it entirely misses the broader geopolitical context of such international sporting events, particularly when they involve nations heavily impacted by US foreign
policy. Newsweek frames Skenes' comments as a simple acknowledgement of the intensity of competition. This narrow framing obscures the fact that the World Baseball Classic, like many international sporting contests involving the US, serves as a significant platform for soft power projection. For countries like the Dominican Republic, whose history has been intimately shaped by repeated US military
interventions dating back to the 1916 occupation, these events are not just games. They are stages where national identity and pride are performed against a backdrop of complex and often coercive US influence. What remains unsaid in your coverage is the profound asymmetry present in these cultural exchanges. The US has historically used sports and cultural diplomacy to advance its interests, a
practice that gained significant traction during the Cold War with initiatives like the 'Ping-Pong Diplomacy' with China in 1971. The Dominican Republic, having endured US-backed dictatorships and interventions, including the 1965 invasion aimed at preventing a leftist government, views these encounters through a vastly different lens than American audiences. While Skenes speaks of pressure, one