Team Japan won the inaugural ‘World Baseball Classic’ (WBC) in 2006. Just four years later, the defending champs prevailed once gain, with the ‘classic’ plays by big names such as Ichiro and Yu Darvish.
Just as for a quick notice, Darvish is a Japanese super hurler that plays for Major League Baseball (MLB)’s Texas Rangers. However, since his dad is Iranian, some anticipate that ‘daddy’ may be perpetually blocked from entering not only the ball park, but the United States.
Thank you, Mr President. I still love your wig sir.
Now, where were we?!
That’s right, the WBC. In 2013 tournament, the defending champion Team Japan succumbed to Puerto Rico in the Semi final, or the ‘Championship Round’.
And here we are now in 2017, only four teams left! (See below)
Baseball prohibited in North Korea by Mr Kim!?
Japan, Puerto Rico, Netherlands and the U.S.A. The ‘Big 4’. South Korea by the way (not North, Dear leader Mr Kim allegedly prohibits its 22 million citizens from playing the sport founded by ‘Imperial Americans’) was initially seen as the rival of Japan as had been in previous tournaments, but they have already been marginalized in this tournament, just like the impeached beauty（and the FMR President） Ms.Pak Geun hye and its politics. They couldn’t make it the 2nd round.
Puerto Rico is playing the Netherlands right now (as I write this article. 3-3! Super tight game) in the first semi final match. But what interests me more than the game is their ‘political status’.
According to the Wikipedia, this small island nation of 3 million is ‘not a U.S state’ , but the “Puerto Ricans were collectively made U.S citizens” in 1917 by the Jones-Shafroth Act. This article argues that ‘U.S imposed citizenship in order to draft Puerto Rican men into the army as American entry to WW1 became likely’.
It is a feasible assumption regarding the fact colonial imperialism was rampant in those days. And whats more striking, the Puerto Ricans today are deprived of their rights to vote for the congress or Presidential election despite the fact they are ostensibly ‘U.S citizens’. I’ve heard a chubby woman from Guam make the same complaint in Tokyo Narita Airport in January this year. That’s right, these two ‘nations’ are not even a sovereign state.
When the United States of America’s founding principles are ‘Democracy’, ‘Equality’ and ‘Human Rights’, their current double-standard in these two ‘pawns’ is difficult to comprehend and simply indefensible. Of course, I understand that the $70 billion debt by the Puerto Rican government was an issue in last year’s U.S Presidential election.
The reality that San Juan is unsustainable without Washington’s financial aid is not to be argued. However, amid the recent rise of nationalism and Brexit movement (Scotland’s proposal of its 2nd referendum on independence has been rejected by Mrs May), the outcome of Puerto Rico’s upcoming referendum on June 11, 2017 on whether to choose between a statehood and independence is surely something we should all focus upon as advocates of fundamental rights.
Oops! Please remember I’m no anti-Trump or anti-American. I’m nothing but an Outspoken Samurai of the 21st century thirsty for truth and fairness, just like the famous Fox News.