The World Baseball Classic reveals something about the American character and global realities: when we don’t try, we don’t win.

The baseball series, closer to a “world” series than anything that has come before, except the Olympic Games, shows what can happen when Americans believe they’ll prevail just because of the colors on their jerseys, and the name on their caps.

We get our you-know-what’s kicked. Granted, there hasn’t been a blowout score recorded against us, but still, we’re not in the finals, which is something next to unimaginable for the country in which this sport was born.

So, why did we lose?

A lot of our ballplayers didn’t suit up for team USA. They were at spring training, getting ready for the regular season of Major League Baseball.

Many of these multi-millionaires didn’t want to injure themselves in contests that don’t “count,” that are invisible to the majority of domestic sports fans, and for which they are not being paid big bucks to play.

To them, it was running the kind of risk that you’d incur playing a game of pickup basketball, then breaking something, and having it end your season or career. Just ask Mr. Boone, formerly of the Yankees, whose ankle was his Achilles heel.

We lost because we didn’t try. I think that’s the real story.

We didn’t field our best team and they didn’t practice together at any length or with intensity, unlike Cuba, one of the better performing teams in the Classic.

But this loss is emblematic of what can and will happen to us in every area, especially in business, if we don’t give our all, if we fail to play our “A-game.”

It’s a lesson from our American Pastime that could very definitely inform our future.

Dr. Gary S. Goodman, President of www.Customersatisfaction.com, is a popular keynote speaker, management consultant, and seminar leader and the best-selling author of 12 books, including Reach Out & Sell Someone® and Monitoring, Measuring & Managing Customer Service, and the audio program, “The Law of Large Numbers: How To Make Success Inevitable,” published by Nightingale-Conant. He is a frequent guest on radio and television, worldwide. A Ph.D. from USC's Annenberg School, a Loyola lawyer, and an MBA from the Peter F. Drucker School at Claremont Graduate University, Gary offers programs through UCLA Extension and numerous universities, trade associations, and other organizations in the United States and abroad. He holds the rank of Shodan, 1st Degree Black Belt in Kenpo Karate. He is headquartered in Glendale, California, and he can be reached at (818) 243-7338 or at: gary@customersatisfaction.com