The game meant more to Venezuela.
One of sportswriting and broadcasting’s most wizened, decrepit shorthand takes. Every game is meaningful at the highest levels, the sport too onerous and skill-specialized to draw success for many who cannot muster daily effort. If a victorious will alone were the separator, David would not have merited memory in his defeat of Goliath.
And yet, I am incapable of gazing at the 3-2 final score, Venezuela’s improbable upset of the United States, without considering this cliché. For the first time since 1945, Venezuela is the champion of an international sporting competition; for the first time, Venezuela is the World Baseball Classic champion. Perhaps the players knew the former. They certainly knew the latter.
Team USA put much of its best foot forward. Despite a bafflingly fallow offensive display in the tournament and the inability to use Tarik Skubal, TV host-turned-manager Mark DeRosa could hardly be expected to shake up his star-studded lineup. Other than leaving his more limited backstop, Will Smith, in to start in lieu of the world’s best catcher, DeRosa’s second-guessing should be focused on preparation over in-game execution. Venezuela, in fairness, let Smith’s primary competition for second-best ride the bench as well, as William Contreras was a fan alongside his brother most of the night, watching captain Salvador Perez.
Perez is one of the night’s heroes. Salvy is a lightning rod analytically. Treated as a shoo-in Hall of Famer by broadcasts and ball players, the venerable Venezuelan is not Yadier Molina, nor Buster Posey. Ascendant framing valuation has been unkind in the past and present of the Kansas City Royals, well, royalty. But between manager Omar López, pitching coach Johan Santana, bench coach Robinson Chirinos, Perez, and the rest of their staff, by 3 AM Tuesday morning, mere hours after their semifinal victory, the game plan was crafted. By hook or by heater, Salvy had to coax brilliance out of a southpaw past his prime and a bullpen working October levels in mid-March.
Perez stole perhaps a single strike all night. He speared multiple borderline breaking balls low in the zone. But the glove he threw up needed little movement for much of the night. With each Pitchcom button pressed, Salvy impelled Eduardo Rodriguez to a halcyon version of himself that daunted opponents. Fastballs just off barrels, changeups just beneath them. Unable to find a windshield wiper setting swift enough, Rodriguez conceded the battle with his tears postgame and he spoke of shaking off his dud performance against the Dominican Republic the previous week and trusting Perez for his scoreless 4.1 innings of work.
Zero shaken-off pitches, one World Baseball Classic championship. Trust in Salvy indeed.
When Rodriguez ceded the game to Eduard Bazardo, who settled his two batters with ease to close the fifth, he did so with a 2-0 lead. The dazzling performance of Mets rookie RHP Nolan McLean was ample for victory. His only major errors were punished. First was a wild pitch that advanced Salvy and Ronald Acuña Jr. into scoring position where tournament MVP Maikel Garcia could cash his teammate in with a deep sacrifice fly. Second, a heart-of-the-plate heater to Wilyer Abreu that found berm in the 5th for the second run, electrifying the already-amplified Miami crowd into a Venezuelan fever dream.
Did they take the lead because it meant more? I’m not sure. U.S.A.’s tournament has been defined, beyond a surprising lack of dominance, by their prioritization and representation of their country, as they see it. A militaristic approach and embrace is not new, indeed it is rote within professional sports in the States. But this was emphatic, noted by U.S. captain Aaron Judge and many others by way of their family’s veterans. Perhaps this conceptualization of representing the United States was spurred by Air Force reserve captain and bullpen RHP Griffin Jax, as well as co-ace RHP Paul Skenes who spent two years at the Air Force Academy before his fastball jetted him – quite understandably – to Louisiana State and then the big leagues quicker than an F-15.
This interpretation of international competition inspired, at its best, an attempt at austere diligence. Discipline is, if not the absence of want, its subjugation. A domination of desire to secure ascetic focus, pure execution and determination. Subvert the individual, the ego, the weakness of personal passions, and the collective will benefit. Play sports long enough in the U.S. and this will be a mentality espoused to you. Play them long enough at the highest level and, even for someone as famously beloved and considerate of others like Cal Raleigh, it can consume you.
This variation on stoicism has an understandable basis for success. Foundational to sports psychology, at least at its highest levels in the U.S., is the idea of controlling the controllables, and seeing the aggregate play out. In baseball more than many sports, adrenaline and emotion can disrupt mechanics more than it augments physical strength in a useful way. Tidy, neat, consistent, this foundation of self-control is monastic and apt for a U.S.A. roster that, as individual players, are unimpeachable.
In most recaps I’d offer a refutation of the juxtaposition between two teams as any sort of quality judgment. Good teams win more than bad ones, but baseball is rife with upsets. The Rockies won a month and a half of games last year. And drawing conclusions of consequence off a 3-2 result in mid-March in a single game? It’s hardly analytical.
But today’s game wasn’t pure chaos. When Bryce Harper clobbered a 1-0 fastball beyond the center field wall to knot things 2-2 in the bottom of the 8th, the yawning maw of improbability began to purse its lips.
Harper’s struggles all spring, vindicated in one swing. But captain Judge went down easy again, an 0-for-4 with three strikeouts that sank his club as much as anyone. To the 9th we went.
The 9th would be Garrett Whitlock’s, as he’d earned high leverage and, as later learned, Mason Miller was only allowed to pitch in a save situation (ergo, a now-impossibility for the home U.S. club). DeRosa perhaps regretted not clarifying further ahead of time. The uncertainty of a single game of baseball strips trends of their value, but it also magnifies the importance of every small edge. An edge like managers with game planning and advance scouts Omar Lopez made sure to credit on the victory podium, crafting a gameplan against the U.S. on both sides of the ball. MLB teams have analytics departments, scouting teams, and data and video analysts galore. All those tools are not guaranteed an international club, especially in two weeks of play. Venezuela pressed every edge, while the U.S. seemed certain inertia would win out.
There’s power in belief. Certainly, in that of Eugenio Suárez. In unified purpose. Every member of Team Venezuela who spoke before, during, and after their championship spoke about their determination to bring joy, pride, happiness, hope to their countrymen. The energy of this belief was different than the assembly line rigidity of the U.S. roster, more akin to sticking one’s hands in a river and attempting to redirect it. With one set of hands, absurd. With many? Chaos is tamed, even just briefly.
It becomes a tool for Luis Arraez to draw a rare walk to lead off the ninth. For Javier Sanoja to swipe second as a pinch-runner thanks to the continued refusal to deviate from Smith behind the dish by DeRosa. It provides Geno, Good Vibes Geno, indefatigable Geno, denied his citizenship application this winter when the country he’s facing and works in invaded Venezuela this winter and thus deemed him a threat Geno, butt of John Smoltz’s unprepared analysis Geno, conflicted but hopeful Geno, a moment of sheer brilliance.
The 3-2 lead is enough. Perhaps pinch-hitting Cal instead of Gunnar Henderson, or Pete Crow-Armstrong earlier, makes a difference. Perhaps Daniel Palencia, the Cubs’ closer who ably kiboshed every threat he faced this WBC, was untouchable with his flag upon his heart and head. I suspect the latter to be truer than the former. The faces in the dugout for Team U.S.A. look the same in defeat as they did in competition, and scarcely different than victory. They’re difficult to focus on over the drums and dancing from Venezuela.
Passion and care are not the burdens of the Venezuelan team, they are their glue. They kept the coaching staff up until 3 AM to prepare for Goliath, Ivan Drago, the emotionless inevitability. They fueled the extra effort of role players like Bazardo, Sanoja, Angel Zerpa, and Jose Butto – appreciated on their work teams, but immortal now from Caracas to Tucupita. Ronald Acuña Jr., cousin of Maikel Garcia and the only superstar who could claim comparable clout on his roster to half a dozen members of his opponent, is asked postgame how he plans to celebrate this victory. He searches for the right words in a second language, in a second country, his iconically cherubic face a study in dried tears and sweat. In paraphrase:
“I want to walk the streets, I want to celebrate with my people.”
This World Baseball Classic was extraordinary. I hope beyond measure the experiences here carry forward into everyday baseball in MLB and below. Not every game can be a festival of emotion and exhilaration. But the experience can be richer, invested in playfully and with deep emotion. Signs, songs, and so much more are what I hope to see. And what I also hope to see is these two teams get to play again in a few years. Until then, congratulations to Venezuela, the World Champions of Baseball.
MIAMI, FL – MARCH 11: Felix Hernandez jokes with Eugenio Suárez #7 of Team Venezuela prior to the 2026 World Baseball Classic Pool D game presented by Capital One between Team Dominican Republic and Team Venezuela at loanDepot park on Wednesday, March 11, 2026 in Miami, Florida. (Photo by Kelly Gavin/WBCI/MLB Photos via Getty Images) MLB Photos via Getty Images
