As reported by WhiteSox.com, the sometimes excellent left-handed setup man Matt Thornton will join Team USA in the 2009 World Baseball Classic.

You can hear the groans from the White Sox faithful already: Thornton will get hurt. The Sox can’t afford to lose a bullpen arm as good as Thornton’s. The World Baseball Classic is a stupid place for any major league ballplayer to be.

The general discussion of the 2006 WBC generally fell into two inane and narrow perspectives: from a purely baseball-watching perspective, it was entirely awesome; from a purely league-centric view, the whole thing was a sham, some kind of glorified exhibition game with no real value. The former argument wasn’t entirely true (did anyone really care about Italy’s 10-0 shellacking of Australia?), but the latter always bothered me, smacking more of some kind of blind loyalty to a league construction that doesn’t warrant that much intense devotion these days.

You could argue the WBC as just some kind of marketing ploy for Major League Baseball, and in a way it is, but what about any element of the current incarnation of MLB isn’t some kind of marketing ploy? If it was really just about the game, would the MLB network exist? MLB.TV? The MLB Shop? The All-Star Game? The Divisional Series? Spring Training ticket packages? The Official Snack Chip of Major League Baseball? Where’s the integrity in that?

Some might posit the games as being fundamentally meaningless, which is at best only partially true because (a) the teams that lose simply stop playing and (b) the games are only meaningless to those who have no stake in whoever is playing them. Australia-Italy may not mean much to you or I, but to a baseball fan (or actual team member) in either of those nations I imagine it’s a big deal to get to see your team play on an international level, especially considering there is no other avenue for teams to play on an international level. In places like Cuba, Panama, Venezuela et al, each highly devoted to baseball and country to the point of collective psychosis, we’re talking about nothing short of national pride being on the line which, if you think about it, carries a little more weight than making sure a guy like Matt Thornton is well-rested enough to get brutalized by an Indians team sitting 24 games ahead of the last-place Sox.

Could Thornton – or anyone, for that matter – get seriously hurt in the WBC? Of course, but Thornton could just as easily get hurt in Spring Training (which, you may recall, he has done before). Or he could get hurt closing the door to his car (Tony Gwynn). Or warming up in the bullpen (Jon Smiley). Or carrying deer meat up the stairs (Clint Barnes). Or sneezing (Sammy Sosa).

The point is, Thornton wants to do it. He owes neither you nor I a refusal of the invitation and if anything it’s surprising more people aren’t happy the Sox have a reliever so ready, willing and able to compete against the best in the world on a moment’s notice. Something bad could come of it, yes, but in the end that’s his problem and his problem alone.

Dude just wants to play some baseball. Who are we to say he shouldn’t?