Other great stories abounded during the two-week tournament. Korea, buoyed by a raft of young KBO stars, made it out of the group stage for the first time ever. Italy’s Cinderella run to the semifinals began with an upset win over Team USA. Czechia held powerhouse Japan to a single run until the ninth inning in their match last week. Ondrej Satoria, a full-time electrician by trade, pitched four scoreless innings against the reigning champions, and Japanese fans gave him a standing ovation when he bid farewell to the Tokyo Dome.
The only real exception in this tournament of joy was Team USA. Few of the players appeared to take any real pleasure or personal pride in playing in the WBC. Some seemed to treat it as a mere extension of spring training. Tarik Skubal, the Detroit Tigers ace and a reigning Cy Young Award winner, pitched in a group-level game against Great Britain and then went back to training camp, declining to participate in further stages. (He was still on hand in Miami on Tuesday night to receive a silver medal.)
First came a widely publicized moment between Team USA catcher Cal Raleigh and Mexican outfielder Randy Arozarena. During one at-bat, Arozarena extended a friendly hand to shake with Raleigh. Both men know each other well—after all, they play together on the Seattle Mariners. Raleigh didn’t move a muscle. Arozarena, understandably so, took it as a personal insult. In a post-game Spanish-language interview, Arozarena explained how he felt in greater detail:
Raleigh, on the other hand, saw no issue with his actions. “I love Randy. I do,” he later said in an interview. “I hate that this is a thing. There’s no beef. When we get back to Seattle, he’s my brother. We’re family. I already reached out to him, so it’s just a competitive environment and I know he would want the same for me when we’re on the team and playoff baseball. I just have a responsibility for my teammates here right now and my country, and emotions are running high.”
The moment symbolized Team USA’s misthinking about the tournament. For every other country, the WBC was an opportunity for both national brotherhood and international fellowship. For the Americans, it was largely framed as an opportunity to glorify American militarism—an embarrassing and reactionary approach to any sporting event, let alone a multi-continental tournament.
O’Neill is best known for claiming to have personally killed Osama bin Laden during the 2011 raid on his Abottabad compound. Other SEALs have disputed this and criticized O’Neill for taking personal credit for specific SEAL activities against their tradition and honor code. Nonetheless, he was able to levy the claim into two book deals, a Fox News contributor job, and a perch for culture-war commentary. Ahead of the 2024 election, for example, he insulted a group of young men for publicly supporting Kamala Harris and claimed, bizarrely, that they “would be my concubines.”
You never want it to get lost why you’re doing this, whatever that why is. And a lot of people, like Paul Skenes said to me when he signed up for this, ‘I want to do this for every serviceman and woman that protects our freedom.’ And that’s why we wear USA across our chest. And I just thought it would be like a time to kind of redirect and get those guys to understand that although this is an unbelievable event, you’re getting a chance to share a locker room with the game’s greats, there’s a reason why you’re doing it, and a reason why people protect our freedom at night. And I just wanted to honor that. So that’s why he came in to talk.
To say that they were honoring the troops is also not quite correct. For one thing, O’Neill is not and should not be taken as representative of the entire U.S. military. Beyond that, this was also not a Memorial Day game where teams naturally honor veterans and fallen soldiers. Team USA was not raising awareness of veteran suicide rates or trying to find housing for homeless ex-servicemembers. Nor were the players highlighting recent budget cuts to VA hospitals, planned changes to facial-hair policies that will disproportionately purge Black soldiers, or the Pentagon’s brief attempt to erase Jackie Robinson’s military service.
This cultural trend is much greater than Team USA, of course, and they are largely a product of it. With a few exceptions, they come from a generation of young men who do not remember America before the September 11th attacks. They grew up in an age where a presidential administration framed opposition to the Iraq War as an attack on active-duty soldiers and veterans alike, a dissent-suppressing mindset that somehow persisted even after most Americans turned against the war.
“My respect for our service men and women knows no bounds,” he wrote. “I’m in awe of those folks. And all that they do to keep us safe. Anything that enables me to honor those who serve this country, I’m going to do. So knowing that service members around the world will be watching these WBC games, some of them deployed far from home, some of them on active duty … it means everything to me. I just want to make them proud.”
“I was never deployed myself,” he wrote, “but I know how much pride those individuals take in wearing that uniform — with your name on the right side of your chest and the U.S. Air Force or Army lettering on the left side … because that’s what you put over your heart. Not your name, your country.” There should be pride in playing for Team USA as well, of course, even if you’re carrying a ball instead of a rifle.
On the field, the lineup oscillated between blowing out weaker teams and barely scraping by against more formidable ones. A sense of entitlement and arrogance seem to permeate the Americans’ approach. Even from the television broadcast, viewers could tell that the vibes—an essential component of any championship team—were off. When pitcher Mason Miller received his silver medal on Tuesday night, he already began taking it off by the time the officials had moved on to the next player.
The other saving grace is Team USA won’t have to wait until the next WBC for a cultural reset. Baseball is returning for the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, and players are already clamoring to participate in it. DeRosa’s rocky run as manager despite the raw talent as his disposal—he appeared to forget at one point that the team hadn’t made it out of the group stage yet—could open the door to new leadership before the next big international tournament.
Every adult is allowed to have a few adolescent beliefs. One of mine is that baseball can be a reflection of the national soul. With any luck, the next iteration of Team USA will celebrate things about our country than its ability to kill large numbers of people overseas. Hopefully they’ll be wearing cowboy hats, playing jazz music, eating hot dogs, quoting from Star Wars, ringing the Liberty Bell, or something similarly fun and corny whenever they hit a home run. After all, if the only thing you love about America is the military, then you don’t really love America at all.
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