As the World Baseball Classic draws closer — the first game is March 8, in Taiwan — there’s a phrase that those involved with Team USA ruminate on every day. Think of it almost as a rallying cry.
“It’s a competition, not an exhibition.”
That runs true at the top of the USA Baseball structure, with executive director/CEO Paul Seiler, team general manager Tony Reagins and manager Mark DeRosa, and you’d better believe it’s true for the players, too.
“There's only one thing on our mind, trying to win this whole thing,” team captain Mike Trout said Friday in a Zoom interview session. “There’s a lot of great countries out there to have a lot of great teams, but that’s the whole reason I signed up, trying to win this thing. There’s nothing else, you know? Anything else is a failure.”
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Truth is, the WBC has often felt like an exhibition in its brief history, partially because it has only a brief history. Other country-vs.-country competitions, such as the World Cup or the Olympics, have traditions that go back almost a century or more. They have legends. They have heroic moments. They have gravitas. But the WBC? It was played for the first time in 2006.
It was new, and new doesn’t carry weight. That takes time.
Another exhibition-ish factor: The WBC is played during spring training, so unlike the World Cup or Olympic team sports, rosters haven’t been made up of only the best players, but the best players who felt like they could make it happen as they warmed up for the season. In some cases, pitching staffs were filled out by veterans who were, let’s say, no longer pitching the most important innings or games for their “regular” teams.
But this is the fifth World Baseball Classic. Players commit seven or eight months ahead, with the promise to be ready to go sooner than they would in a “normal” spring training situation. And the newness of the WBC is gone, replaced by something even better: that fire Trout clearly has in his first time on the team.
“I definitely do (think it’s changing),” Reagins told me on a Friday morning phone call. “The energy now around the tournament is heightened, the competitiveness around the tournament. Early on, I think it was more about the newness that sometimes events like this have. But as it’s gone on and we’ve had a couple different iterations of this thing, it’s become more competitive.
“I see that in the interest level of players. … I’ve heard that in the past they really had to talk players into participating. This really hasn’t been the case. They want to play. They want to be a part of it. There’s a level of commitment there.”
Trout announced during the All-Star festivities last summer that he would play for Team USA in the 2023 WBC, and it didn’t take long for other stars to follow. Two-time MVP Bryce Harper joined, though he’ll miss the tournament after offseason surgery. MVPs Mookie Betts and Paul Goldschmidt are aboard, as are superstars like Nolan Arenado, Trea Turner, Pete Alonso and on down the list. Clayton Kershaw leads the pitching staff, with workhorses Adam Wainwright, Logan Webb and Nestor Cortes also in the rotation mix.
Every position/role on the USA roster has at least one perennial All-Star.
“I think you feel and see the love and passion players from other countries have not only representing their country, but also playing together,” DeRosa, who is the co-host of “MLB Central” every weekday morning on MLB Network, said in a recent phone interview. “I had a chance as a player to play in Venezuela, and I know the passion in that country. For those guys to get together and try to win a title is huge. I understand for Japan and Cuba how much this means. I think their passion has kind of elevated this thing to where now the U.S. player is not only wanting to play, but also, ‘Let’s go get it.’ I think in 2017, with Jim Leyland and what that team was able to do, has definitely opened some eyes.”
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That 2017 USA team won the title, the first for the U.S., so there’s a bit of pressure on DeRosa’s squad. Japan won the first two championships, in 2006 and 2009, and the Dominican Republic won in 2013. The fifth WBC was scheduled to take place in 2021, but delayed because of the pandemic.
“I don’t see it as pressure,” Reagins said, “but I do see it as expectation for us to really compete at a high level, and defend. I think that’s twofold, based on us winning in 2017 and the caliber of the so many high-profile players we have on the team.”
Right now, Team USA’s list of players with interest is 50 long. Conversations are being had, with players, their manager and agents, and the final 30-man roster has to be finalized on Feb. 7. The USA plays its first official game on March 11 in Phoenix. No matter what happens, it’ll be an experience nobody on the roster will forget.
“I talk about it relentlessly, and everybody who ever played does,” DeRosa said. “I just ran into Buster Posey, and we were discussing it. He said it was one of the highlights of his career. I mean, this is a guy who won three World Series and pretty much did whatever he wanted to do in the game. To put USA across your chest for those three weeks, to be in that locker room with that concentration of talent and makeup and players, you just can’t replicate it. Everybody, to a man, is just so fired up, including the staff. We’re super excited to get it going.”
They are super excited, no doubt. As they should be. Wearing the Team USA logo, sharing a clubhouse with other All-Stars and future Hall of Famers for several weeks — it’s going to be unforgettable. But Trout referred to that as “all that other stuff” in his Zoom on Friday.
From the top to bottom, Team USA is unified in its goal. Pressure, schmessure.
“The whole main reason we're here,” Trout said, “is to win this thing.”