Japan needs to stop hitting the ball to left.
That was a good game.
Japan walks it off!
What an amazing game! God this is fun.
Gonna be Trout vs Ohtani. One of them will even return to Anaheim with a championship! Probably.
Great game, for sure. Kinda too bad…I was hoping for USA v Mexico, but Japan is good too.
Imagine if Ohtani pitches a couple of innings tomorrow…
USA-Japan is definitely probably the ratings-getter. Speaking of which, the WBC seems to be drawing quite a bit better crowd than I remember previous ones doing:
USA: Team USA’s first game versus Great Britain on FOX/FOX Deportes averaged 1.592 million viewers. That made it the most-watched first-round game in America since 2009.
Japan: Japan vs. South Korea on March 10th pulled a 44.4 TV rating, out-rating all sports competitions during the Tokyo Olympics. The island nation’s first four games averaged a whopping 42.3 ratings.
South Korea: The four games, including South Korea, averaged 1.781 million viewers, up 35% from 2017. South Korea vs. Japan averaged 2.709 million viewers – making it the most-watched WBC game in Korea since their championship game against Japan in 2009.
Taiwan: Chinese Taipei’s four First Round games averaged 1.301 million viewers in Taiwan. That was up 151% from 2017.
Caribbean: The numbers for games involving Caribbean nations aren’t complete yet. But MLB said viewership for first-round games in Puerto Rico was up 77%. Puerto Rico’s game against the Dominican Republic averaged a massive 62% share of people watching TV then.
The first round also sets new overall and average attendance records.
This year’s games drew 1,010,999 fans. That’s up 98% vs. the previous record of 510,056 in 2017. The average game attendance of 25,275 was up 24% from 2017.
Viva la WBC! It’s a pretty damn fun event.
Ohtani? The announcers said Darvish.
Nevermind, I misread your post.
Why him and not Yu Darvish? The ever-awesome Chelsea Janes was wondering that, too. And then:
Japan’s pitching overwhelming Team USA so far.
3-1 Japan, two innings left.
Looks very much like Ohtani will pitch the ninth!
Schwarbs just fouled off about 5 or 6 pitches, clearly measuring Darvish. And then put the 10th pitch of the at bat into the upper deck.
3-2 now.
Top of the ninth. Ohtani in to pitch. He’ll face his teammate Mike Trout. This is the stuff.
JAPAN WINS!
Ohtani whiffs Trout!
Thanks a lot Mookie. Sent a Dodger to do a man’s job.
That was just the filthiest, hair-on-it, frisbee-ish slider you’ll ever see. My goodness.
Look at this monster:
This is fun:
Lots of Giants and ex-Giants in that series. But they played for the Yomiuri Giants.
Perfect tournament. Perfect game. Perfect ending. Perfect player.
And one last clip of Nootbaar for the road
Trout had no shot against that nonsense. It amazes me they ever hit anything. I bailed out of competitive baseball AKA Little League when the breaking balls showed up.
So, I have been in and out of baseball watching for the last few years.
I was just glued to the TV for the WBC, that was so awesome. A tournament is so exciting, the players looked like they were having a hell of a lot of fun, and most of the games were nail-biters down to the last out. Players were doing stuff that felt like it was scripted, the US digging themselves into a hole vs Venezuela, and then taking the lead with a crazy grand slam. The final inning of the championship pitting Ohtani vs Trout. Having Ohtani to close the game was so much fun!
Incredible stuff, what lessons can the MLB take from this into the league?
Loosen the hell up and have fun. MLB thinks baseball should be played like a wake.
Good god that final at bat sequence would get a screenwriter blackballed for life it was so perfectly on the nose. Not a baseball guy by any measure but that was a hell of a thing to watch.
Seriously, Trout v Ohtani to win it all is just anime shit, y’all.