2026 World Baseball Classic.

USA is in the Finals.

Opponent TBD tomorrow between Venezuela and Italy.

Happy for Venezuela as they are always well represented in MLB. Really shocked that they came back from down 6-2 against a great team like Japan

Too bad Ohtani didn't pitch, so we could have seen what would have happened.

Looking forward to this one! BTW guys please post non-Clipper threads in the appropriate forum. The new "Recent Posts" section should address visibility concerns. Thanks!

Wild pitch and sac fly and Venezuela take the lead 1-0. That ball was driven- lucky it wasn't a home run.

Yay team USA with their first hit- Turang grounds it into the right field

Eduardo Rodriguez, who had an ERA of 5 for the DBacks last year, has completely shutdown team USA through the first 3 innings.

Bryce Harper goes boom- deep center field! Ties the game at 2 with 2 outs in the bottom of the 8th vs their closer! Witt Jr gets a lot of credit too for drawing the walk right before.

Wow that looked like a strike by Whitlock but ump called it ball 4.

Bang bang play as Sanoja steals second base, nobody out. And now Suarez doubles to left center- OUCH. Gotta hold Venezuela here as still nobody out.

Not sure why team USA challenge that as Suarez clearly touched the 3rd base bag before retreating to second base.

That was scary as Perez crushed that ball but right at Anthony. Here we go bottom of the 9th- apparently Venezuela is bringing in their designated closer Daniel Palencia.

Palencia just blows Schwarber away, and Gunnar Henderson pops out. It's now up to Roman Anthony.

Anthony strikes out- and Venezuela are the champs. They're a great team, full of good MLB players, so not it's not a surprising result. Team USA offense just couldn't get going despite all the big bats- just 2 runs each in the last 2 games.

Eugenio Suarez with an emotional interview afterwards, saying that the closeness of the players playing like a family was key. It showed, and you can just imagine how proud Venezuelans are. Apparently they even let schools out early so the kids can watch the game. Eduardo Rodriguez was just gigantic for them, started the game and shutting down team USA for 4 1/3 innings.

Congratulations to Venezuela. Means so much to them whereas most Americans don't even know the WBC exists

More than anything, I love going to their roster on the official WBC site. Click on just about every name and you are directed to their MLB team page and bio. Pretty much all MLB and more importantly, all born and raised in Venezuela. None of the garbage you see in Olympic basketball or World cup of basketball. Andray Blatche playing for the Philippines despite not knowing that the native dialect is called Tagalog

Chris Kaman playing for Germany despite not speaking a word of German

Nigeria fielding a team full of American born 2nd generation Nigerians

God knows who playing for Mexico because their great grandfather who they never met or who never even met their grandfather spend a few weeks in Mexico

Eric Gordon, Andre Drummond and Norman Powell playing for Jamaica and so on and so forth

All of it is garbage and goes against the spirit of national pride. These are all guys back dooring the process in order to play in an international tournament. With the Venezuelan team, they are all born and bred in the country and are great players as their MLB resume shows. They sung the anthem with pride and will cherish this for the rest of their lives

All of it is garbage and goes against the spirit of national pride. These are all guys back dooring the process in order to play in an international tournament. With the Venezuelan team, they are all born and bred in the country and are great players as their MLB resume shows. They sung the anthem with pride and will cherish this for the rest of their lives

That's a great distinction, and the conhesiveness from that comraderie can only help with their focus and effort. With team USA- they're all from the US but the team itself just doesn't spend as much time together. Baseball is a game though where the result of one game isn't wholly indicative of the best team. So perhaps in the future we'll see a true "World Series"- at least battle it out 2 out of 3 games or something.

Eugenio Suarez with an emotional interview afterwards, saying that the closeness of the players playing like a family was key. It showed, and you can just imagine how proud Venezuelans are. Apparently they even let schools out early so the kids can watch the game. Eduardo Rodriguez was just gigantic for them, started the game and shutting down team USA for 4 1/3 innings.

That was a cool interview, agree.

Looking forward to this one! BTW guys please post non-Clipper threads in the appropriate forum. The new "Recent Posts" section should address visibility concerns. Thanks!

I will keep this in mind. I was probably the biggest offender in recent months.

But as you said, your new redesign should address the concerns.

I hear a decent amount of talk about it on national sports radio. Has been like that since 2006.

Have you seen the Aaron Judge memes after yesterday?

I hear a decent amount of talk about it on national sports radio. Has been like that since 2006.

I'll take your word for it but I remember being so gung ho about the WBC being a thing back in 2006 because of how it reflects on MLB as a whole. With Cuba and Japan in the original title game, it was sort of a black eye for MLB in that most Cubans couldn't defect so you had a whole team of non MLB talent and the majority of the Japanese team played in the Japanese league despite many of them being good enough for MLB. Therefore, MLB was missing a ton of talent but at least they had something to zero in on. Improve relations with Cuba and figure out ways beyond contract amount to get Japanese talent to come over and look what happened, we now have roughly 26 Cubans on MLB rosters as well as around 14 Japanese so the WBC helped us identify talent to make MLB an overall better product

The problem is that I just couldn't find anyone who cared about this and that was me talking to multiple fans who would count baseball as their favorite sport. Some were just outright against it as they worried about their favorite players being hurt in a "meaningless" tournament

I will say that things have improved as far as WBC exposure is concerned. "WBC" was the discount code at my favorite cheesesteak place in Koreatown and when I went to pickup my dinner, I saw the Japan vs. Venezuela game on the big screen then when I went to dinner at an Italian restaurant in Sylmar on Tuesday night, the game was on multiple big screens with the restaurant patrons all getting into it. It has come a long way in 20 years but still has a ways to go

Have you seen the Aaron Judge memes after yesterday?

I have not. Fill me in

Got it.

Good overview of the history. Yeah, there's more MLB players playing in it now than in 2006. That probably helps things too.

I went to two different breweries in the evening on Tuesday for St. Patrick's Day, and fans who were near the TV were locked in on the game, at both locations.

Also, just to be a completist, at the first brewery, it was shown in one area on an actual TV. And in another area of the brewery on a projector. People were watching in both areas of the brewery.

Also, I did hear cheering when the game ended, at the 2nd brewery, but I pretended not to hear it so I could go home and watch the last few innings more carefully. Since I was with a friend at the 2nd place, so I didn't want to focus so closely on the game then. At the first place, I was by myself, so I paid attention closely then.

Your experience seeing fans at the Italian restaurant seems to mirror the good attention I noticed during my night out.

What else do you think they can do?

I think a 4 year gap is too long. Is two years doable?

4 years works for me as that's the gap for the World cup, Olympics and so on but I'm just one person. Being that there are less injuries in baseball than there are in Soccer and Basketball, two years could work

I will add that since MLB took over promoting the event, the exposure has gotten better. That's something that I forgot to add in my last post

I think at the end of the day, our American players just have to care a little more. Get into it the way the other teams get into via running on the field after homeruns and whatever other celebrations there are but I guess at the end of the day, our fans just have to value the tournament as a whole. As long as American fans don't care about our national team and just their favorite MLB team, things won't progress from at least an American standpoint

As far as the venue is concerned, it's weird to not have the home run fountain.

It's not one of my favorites, but it does make that ballpark unique. So it should have been there, and would have been fun to see in this tourney.

I'm a fan of keeping things that make the ballparks unique.

It would be like getting rid of the Brewers home run slide.