Team USA baseball sucked, and it had nothing to do with finishing second

Team USA was pathetic in the World Baseball Classic final against Venezuela on Tuesday night, and it has nothing to do with losing to a country with a 10th of the population, and 383 times less GDP. They’re pathetic both because of how they acted after winning silver, the message they sent to young fans around the country, and how Team USA competed in the entire tournament, managing to achieve the impossible: Suck the romanticism out of baseball.

The foundation for the millionaire stars of today was laid by those who loved the game so much that there was no escaping its siren song. Negro League athletes barely scraping together a living wage, traveling dusty backroads on uncomfortable buses for hours, because their absolute love of baseball was worth sacrificing comfort. Promising talent from countries like Venezuela, feeling unbelievable pressure as children to one day use the talents they honed with makeshift bats and balls to hopefully break the cycle of generational poverty. Farm kids from the midwest, exhausted from working the land — but not too tired to ever pass on a game of catch or some batting practice.

Baseball without romanticism is an empty husk. A brief distraction, before being ignored. On Tuesday night Team USA replaced joy with sour grapes, with Kyle Schwarber, Mason Miller, Logan Webb, Pete Crow-Armstrong, Bobby Witt Jr., Roman Anthony and Gabe Speier all removing their silver medals and metaphorically tossing them aside within moments of receiving them.

Of course Team USA was disappointed to only win silver. They walked into this tournament with unbelievable ego fueled by American Exceptionalism, causing them to operate under the assumption that this was their tournament to lose from the very first pitch. They bought a phony bill of goods that told them nobody on earth could stand up to the profound might of Team USA, rattled sabres along the way, only to leave with their tail between their legs.

There are a multitude of sins to blame for USA’s $383M roster failing: Rotating players in and out as if this was spring training, and a significant portion of the roster carried themselves as if gold was a foregone conclusion and they didn’t really need to work for it. All this wrapped in unimaginable levels of military symbolism, from Cal Raleigh’s warm-up shirt emblazoned with the warning label from a Claymore mine, to having a former Navy SEAL talk to the team to amp them up. Team USA chose to adopt jingoism as its brand in a way no past United States team has in the WBC, made even more uncomfortable when the best of us, members of our armed forces, are being killed in a conflict that seemingly has no plan, no goal, no strategy, and was labeled as having no point by a top intelligence officer who quit over fake justifications for military action.

If Team USA hockey at the Winter Olympics were the amuse bouche for this behavior, Team USA baseball was the 72 oz steak challenge that needed to be eaten in 90 minutes.

When Team USA lost in 2023 there wasn’t the same level of teeth-gnashing angst at finishing second. Japan beat USA 3-2 in Miami, with the showdown of Shoehei Ohtani vs. Mike Trout being the final at-bat, with Ohtani getting the save by striking out his teammate in the most dramatic way possible. Was it disappointing to lose for Team USA? Sure, but there was also a celebration at the feast global baseball gave us, and an appreciation for what an amazing tournament it was. Not sour grapes at losing, no removing of medals, no seething in feelings of audacity that someone dared to beat the United States.

Things have changed in a short amount of time. There is a pervasive, Ricky Bobby-esque “if you’re not first, you’re last” element to everything in world sports now. It’s not good enough to compete, to win second place, and narrowly lose a tight game. Everything has to be about domination, obliteration, decimation — and what does that tell a generation of young athletes we’re hoping to raise not just to win, but more critically, teach them the value in losing with grace.

Team USA is the second-best baseball team in the world in 2026. That’s amazing! They almost pulled off an incredible comeback win due to some Bryce Harper heroics, but they fell just short. It’s a shame, but it’s sports. Whatever happened to this iteration of Team USA at the World Baseball Classic needs to be excised like a festering wound. If we want to see this team win again, and be a team we can be proud of then they need to get back to the heart of the game, the love of the sport, and stop being willing propaganda participants of the federal government.

We need them to stick to baseball.