Mariners' Cal Raleigh, Randy Arozarena finally end MLB's dumbest spring controversy

Believe it or not, the whole Cal Raleigh-Randy Arozarena Handshakegate thing at the World Baseball Classic happened almost two weeks ago. Even more unbelievable is that it's only now finally being laid to rest by the two stars.

Raleigh said his piece literally the day after Arozarena responded to his handshake snub with a barrage of expletives. Arozarena didn't say his until last week, and what he said then was basically a "no comment" with lots of padding.

But don't worry, everyone. The moment we were all waiting for finally dropped on Saturday, with both Raleigh and Arozarena communicating through the media that they have talked things out and that everything is cool now.

For his part, Arozarena says he apologized to Raleigh. For his, Raleigh says they "were both sorry" when they talked out what transpired during and after the March 9 match between USA and Mexico.

We can all move on now, but not before a final ruling on this whole thing: Good grief, was this just the stupidest thing to have ever happened.

The Cal Raleigh-Randy Arozarena WBC controversy was utterly needless and completely dumb

There are so many ways the Raleigh-Arozarena drama could have avoided spiraling out of control, and those start with the simple fact that Raleigh could have just shaken Arozarena's darn hand.

This wasn't Raleigh's choice, necessarily. Not playing nice with the opposition is kind of Team USA's whole thing in the World Baseball Classic. Heck, this wasn't even Arozarena's first time being snubbed by an American catcher during the WBC.

That said, Raleigh's willingness to go along with what was functionally a team policy was emblematic of just how out of touch he and Team USA were with the spirit of the tournament. They basically showed up in business attire to a block party — for all the good it did them in the end.

Yet lest anyone think there should only be a pox on only one house here, Arozarena's previous WBC experience wasn't his only reason not to expect a handshake from Raleigh. By all accounts, he had advance warning not to even try to engage his Mariners teammate during the tournament.

As such, his profane rant was either an unearned overreaction or a case of sarcasm literally getting lost in translation. Since Arozarena still hasn't copped to the latter, we have to assume the former is what actually happened.

Whatever the case, it's easy enough to believe now that the dust is settled and that Raleigh, Arozarena and the Mariners are ready to row in the same direction. This line in Arozarena's statement hits just right: "He’s family, and we are both focused on helping the Mariners win the World Series.”

Even so, this whole thing calls to mind the (appropriately NSFW) moral of the story at the end of Burn After Reading. If it's a question of what was learned, hopefully everyone learned not to do that again.