Marcus Stroman Lifts Team USA To First WBC Championship Over Puerto Rico

That Stroman that was on display Wednesday night, as team US claimed it’s first WBC championship.

The game’s star? Blue Jays pitcher Marcus Stroman, a 25-year-old righty who hurled six scoreless innings, allowing a lone hit. Equally as clear from the comments afterward was how much the USA players respected the Japanese and their unique style of play. Against Colombia, they almost lost on a walk-off, but outfielder Jose Bautista threw out Colombia runner Oscar Mercado at the plate as he tried to score on a flyout, sending the game into extra-innings. Stroman came back out for the seventh but immediately served up a double down the left field line to Angel Pagan.

He was so dominant that he permitted just three balls out of the infield. The best moment by far was when USA centerfielder Adam Jones leaped to steal a home run from the Dominican Republic’s Manny Machado at Petco Park in San Diego, triggering two tips of the cap from the Baltimore teammates.

The World Baseball Classic championship trophy is finally coming to America.

They may have forever changed the way major leaguers view the tournament.

Team USA manager Jim Leyland said he was going to stick with the pitchers who got him here. I personally believe the clubs are excited about keeping this event going.

Knowing that I was wading into the swamp of political correctness, I’ve tried to use words like “tend” or “might” and “probably”, because it’s dumb to assume everyone from a Latin culture or an American culture feels the same way. Puerto Rico was the unquestioned champion, sweeping the competition in a decisive manner.

That’s Stroman, as in no-no-man. Ian Kinsler, Andrew McCutchen and Brandon Crawford each drove in two runs for the USA, which finished the tournament with a 6-2 record. After he gave the ball to manager Jim Leyland, Stroman strutted off the mound, head bobbing, to a standing ovation, then soaked in the gratitude of his giddy teammates – his US teammates.

He struck out in his first two at-bats, looking worse with each at-bat, and then botched a sacrifice bunt. Then led by Molina, the squad walked en masse toward the celebrating USA players, tipped their caps and applauded. Madison Bumgarner and Clayton Kershaw were nowhere to be found, and in their place were Tanner Roark, Chris Archer and a number of solid pitchers, but certainly not the best team US potentially had to offer.

Jim Leyland very almost broke into tears.

He told Archer to stay home.

The final’s biggest social media moment, given the lack of excitement in the game proper, was regarding ESPN’s decision to put its Deportes feed over on ESPN2. “We tip our cap to team Puerto Rico and everybody else in the tournament but we did something special and it happened because of hard work”. In addition, there will be 12 other countries, likely made up mostly of teams who were in the qualifier last time around, such as Spain, Brazil, New Zealand, Panama, Pakistan, Great Britain, South Africa, and more. “Something they can be proud of”.

It was a patriotic night at Dodger Stadium as the Americans outplayed the undefeated Puerto Ricans in every facet of the game, avenging a 6-5 loss in the quarterfinals last Friday in San Diego.

Stores have even run out of blonde hair dye, with entire classrooms dying their hair to emulate their idols. They play more on the perimeter even with the bigs and I bet PJ Tucker can muscle up and guard James Johnson as well as anyone when Miami goes small. It grows and grows, and it becomes stronger. “Obviously, this is our first win”.