The World Baseball Classic has matured to the point where, like the World Cup and NCAA tournament, each edition is going to be remembered for a specific storyline.
In 2023, that storyline was the ascension of Shohei Ohtani to the level of Global Sports God. Over those two-and-a-half weeks we saw him definitively swipe the crown of “game’s best player” right off the head of his then-teammate, Mike Trout. We saw him hit a cultural Q-rating that no baseball player had approached in decades. And we reached a tipping point in the baseball GOAT debate wherein a critical mass of fans started saying “yup, it’s him.”
What will the storyline be for the 2026 tournament? Sadly, I think it’ll be last night’s atrocious strike call to end what had been a sublime baseball game.
Just an awful, inexcusable call. I’m sure someone in the comments will come up with something, but I can’t think of a single botched ball/strike call that was as impactful as that in recent baseball memory. The fact that Juan Soto was rung up with a similarly bad call at a similarly big moment earlier in the game only fuels the outrage. I have a feeling this is something we’re going to hear Dominican ballplayers and fans talk about for a long time. It’ll probably even be the main storyline heading into the next tournament.
And now we have Roman Anthony and Garrett Whitlock carrying Team USA into the finals.
Anthony — who has seven hits, four walks, two homers, seven RBI and an OPS of 1.014 thus far — hit this monster sockdolager that turned out to be the game winning hit:
Then Garrett Whitlock mowed down the heart of possibly the greatest lineup ever assembled to hold Anthony’s lead in the eighth (though, yes, this included that bad call against Juan Soto).
Team USA now awaits the outcome of tonight’s Venezuela-Italy game, while Anthony-induced giddiness has reached dangerous levels amongst Red Sox fans.
Talk about the WBC and whatever else you feel like and, as always, be good to one another.
