World Baseball Classic takes turn for the bizarro in Miami
You kept waiting for Jeffrey Loria to skulk up out of his lair and try to trade Joe Mauer as soon as the catcher cracked an RBI double in the first inning allowing Team USA to, for once, breathe easy.
By
Scott Miller
•
5 min read
MIAMI -- You kept waiting for Jeffrey Loria to skulk up out of his lair and try to trade Joe Mauer as soon as the catcher cracked an RBI double in the first inning allowing Team USA to, for once, breathe easy.
Maybe from somewhere under his rock, that's exactly what he was doing.
As for Team USA, it survived both Puerto Rico and the World Baseball Classic's second-round shift to Miami. With flying colors (which, incidentally, coat pretty Marlins Park on all levels and from all angles) in a 7-1 breeze.
Weird times, weird day.
And not merely because for the first time in memory, Team USA now is playing from ahead instead of playing from behind.
In this city, in a parallel soap opera, you could just as easily dub Round 2 of this tournament the Biogenesis Invitational -- there were Gio Gonzalez (five terrific shutout innings) and Ryan Braun (two hits, two runs scored) from Team USA, Nelson Cruz from the Dominican Republic (two hits earlier in the day against Italy).
Watching Jose Reyes and Giancarlo Stanton, it was impossible to escape the ugly and despicable backdrop of Loria's lies as baseball returned to tainted Marlins Park for the first time since he stripped his team over the winter.
Reyes hit a home run, singled and scored twice in the Dominican Republic's 5-4 skin-of-its-teeth victory against Italy in the afternoon.
Stanton -- batting eighth, incredibly -- belted a single, double and was intentionally walked as Team USA manhandled a weak Puerto Rico team managed by a fired Marlins manager, Edwin Rodriguez.
Loria's greasy fingerprints are everywhere.
For Reyes, it was an unexpected return to the place where he's thankful he never took up the owner's advice to buy a house.
"I'm extremely happy to come back to this park," Reyes said, taking the high road. "Since last year when I played here, the fans supported me very well."
Then, as if to make sure there would be no misunderstanding, Reyes added: "I came here because it's the Dominican Republic, understanding that I played here before, but I came out to the field today to help my homeland."
For Stanton, the games this week surely will be the only ones with any semblance of atmosphere here in 2013. Good luck to him after this.
You bet he soaked up the charged atmosphere of 32,872 whose sound was amplified in a closed-roof park.
"You have to," Stanton said. "You have to understand that they're here to watch Team USA as a whole.
"They were great to me and [Marlins reliever Steve] Cishek. They had our backs the whole time."
They were not so great to former Marlin and Team USA reliever Heath Bell, the only man booed during pregame, on-field introductions. C'est la vie.
As big as Marlins Park plays, it felt like Team USA was in control from the moment Mauer drilled his RBI double in the first. Though it stayed 1-0 until David Wright knocked home the first of his five RBIs in the third, Puerto Rico never had a chance with Gonzalez spotting low-to-mid-90s fastballs and spotting his elusive changeup.
Wright again was an offensive hero, and his three-run double in the eighth broke this one open. Stanton made a beautiful running over-his-shoulder catch, slick second baseman Brandon Phillips turned a double play pivot-and-throw while on both knees on the bag ... from the red, white and blue's side, the night was pretty much flawless.
All in all, quite different from last round, when Team USA's stunning opening-night loss to Mexico and then falling behind early to Italy and Canada pretty much had Joe Torre's crew sweating the entire time.
Now, not only were they ahead all night Tuesday, they will move into a ginormous powerhouse game Thursday against the Dominican Republic in great shape.
Win, and they clinch a spot in the WBC Final Four next week in San Francisco.
Lose, and they still go to San Francisco if they win the next game, against Italy or Puerto Rico.
"You don't have to play differently, but you can play with a different mentality," Stanton said. "It's not, 'If I don't get the job done here with runners in scoring position, dang, this could be our last chance.' "
As he said, if you play the game with too much urgency, you're not going to do much of anything.
Take it from Cole Hamels, this Dominican Republic team goes down with more difficulty than swallowing a mouthful of broken glass.
In an exhibition last week over in Clearwater, the Dominicans destroyed him for 12 hits and eight earned runs in 2 2/3 innings. Maybe R.A. Dickey’s knuckler will keep them off balance Thursday.
But be forewarned: The loose Dominicans look like they're having the time of their lives. During their three-run seventh Tuesday that wiped out the last of Italy's early 4-0 lead, rarely have you seen so much joy in a baseball game.
When the go-ahead run scored, the Dominicans leapt en masse over the fence in front of the dugout and ran onto the grass to celebrate.
"It's a different style the way we play here than the way we play in New York," Robinson Cano said of the Yankees. "Here, you see how we get outside of the dugout. That's something you never see in the big leagues. ...
"Here, we get a chance to come out and just be able to give high fives to the guys. We can jump. Nobody sees you trying to show somebody up."
Cano talked about the Dominicans having a mission to win, and he's playing like it: Following his 3-for-4 day Tuesday, he's now hitting .632 (12 for 19) in this WBC.
Nevertheless, Dominican manager Tony Pena is playing it cool.
"We don't feel like we're the favorite," Pena said. "I feel the favorite to win here is the United States."
For once in this WBC, Pena might be right.
But check back on Thursday at Marlins Park ... unless, of course, Loria has found a chop shop offering enough money by then.
