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When the American and National League champions square off in October, it's called "The World Series" but, while most of the best players play in those leagues, it's not truly an international championship. Prior to 2006 there were international tournaments but those were mostly restricted to amateur athletes. Baseball was an Olympic sport for a short time but players on MLB rosters were not able to participate.

There has long been support from fans for an international tournament that would include the best players in baseball. But MLB owners and players were resistant, owners due to the fear of injury to their stars and the MLB Players Association due to concerns with the drug testing format. Japanese baseball organizations had their own set of issues but in 2005 everyone came to an agreement and in 2006 the first World Baseball Classic (WBC) was held.

Our reaction at the time was "Oh, a baseball exhibition tournament, I guess that's okay." Then we started watching it and were completely enthralled. The competition was really good and we watched again in 2009, 2013, 2017 and 2023. The 2023 championship game had an incredibly dramatic ending. Japan was up by one run with the U.S. batting in the bottom of the ninth inning. With two outs, Mike Trout of the Los Angeles Angels came up to bat. Japan brought his Angels teammate Shohei Ohtani in to pitch. In a matchup of one of the best pitchers in the world vs. one of the best hitters, Ohtani struck out Trout to clinch the WBC championship for Japan.

We'd floated the idea of going to the WBC before but after the Ohtani-Trout face-off it changed from "maybe we should go to the WBC someday" to "we ARE going to the WBC!!"

In 2026 the WBC was played in four cities - Tokyo, San Juan, Houston and Miami. The quarterfinals, the first round where the loser was automatically eliminated, were held in Houston and Miami. The semi-finals and final were to be played in Miami. We decided to go for the quarterfinals in Miami.

We told DC's son and daughter-in-law (both of whom are Two Guys and a Map Hall of Famers and hardcore baseball fans) what we were planning. Their response was "We're in!" The chance to see both Ohtani and the rest as well as spend time with "Poppy" made this an adventure they could not resist. Dan, Alyssa and Julian flew to Miami from New York on March 12. The next day we flew down from Washington.

We got in to Fort Lauderdale mid-morning. The game that day started at 6:30 so we had decided to take a food-and-culture walking tour of the Little Havana neighborhood in Miami. We ran into traffic coming down from Fort Lauderdale but our tour guide Hoji was great - he texted and called us to keep us informed of where the group was and we caught up with them shortly after the tour began.

Welcome to Little Havana

Mojito - mmmm

Cigar rolling

It was really interesting and fun. The neighborhood became known as "Little Havana" in the 1960s when large numbers of Cubans fleeing the Castro regime settled there. In 2017 the National Trust for Historic Preservation declared the neighborhood a national treasure. We saw lots of murals and a couple of monuments commemorating the unsuccessful Bay of Pigs invasion. We learned that Cuban cigars can be legally manufactured in the U.S. because Cuban seeds are used to grow tobacco in Nicaragua and that tobacco is legally imported to the U.S. for cigar production. We were fed well - empanadas, Cuban sandwiches, Mojitos, coffee and pastries. We passed the Ball and Chain, a famous music club where salsa and jazz giants have been playing since 1935 and visited Domino Park where neighborhood residents gather to drink coffee, smoke cigars and play dominoes.

The Ball and Chain, where Miles Davis, Duke
Ellington, Celia Cruz and many more played.

Domino Park

Bay of Pigs Monument

When we started planning on attending the WBC we looked into hotels (expensive) and public transportation (practically non-existent to Marlins Park). Then we hit on the idea of Airbnb and found a very nice, reasonably priced place two blocks from the ballpark!

After the Little Havana tour we checked in. Shortly after that, DC's son, daughter-in-law and grandson arrived. Dan, Alyssa and Julian are a lot of fun to hang with and we chilled out for an hour or so before heading to Marlins Park for our first taste of the World Baseball Classic. Everything went smoothly - Dan had found a great parking place, we sailed through security and our Airbnb was so close to the park that it took us less time to walk from there to the gate than it did to walk from the gate to our seats.

It was great fun from the moment we left our Airbnb. The streets were filled with people and the atmosphere inside the ballpark was electric.

Welcome to the 2026 World Baseball Classic!

It was like this all throughout the game

Friday night's game was Korea vs. the Dominican Republic. Korea had a very good team. The Dominican's were stacked from top to bottom - Fernando Tatis Jr., Juan Soto, Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Manny Machado and more. Going into this game they led the WBC in runs, home runs, walks, batting average, on-base percentage and OPS.

The crowd was probably about 85% Dominican Republic fans and they were there to party. Cheering, chanting, passionately rooting for their team, with drum-and-horn bands circling the concourse throughout the game.

The Koreans were clearly outmatched. The Dominican Republic had a seven run lead after three innings, then things settled down until the bottom of the seventh. At that point Austen Wells * hit a three run home run. The WBC has a mercy rule - if one team is ahead by 15 runs after 5 innings or 10 after 7, then the game ends. So Wells' home run was essentially a walk-off and we saw only seven innings that night.

It was a rout but watching the Dominican Republic play baseball was a real treat. At that point one had to think they were going to win it all. (Spoiler - they didn't)

* We hear you - "Austen Wells? He's Dominican?" Eligibility rules for WBC players are pretty lax. Most of the Latin American and South American teams were completely home grown talent (Wells being an exception) but others relied on family background for eligibility. For example, 23 members of Italy's team were born in the U.S.

So, what do Two Guys do on a day when their game doesn’t start until 9:00 PM? Why, go to a game in another city of course!

Saturday morning we drove up to West Palm Beach where we met Andy and Lori, who we’d visited on our last trip to Florida in 2012. The spring training base of our hometown team, the Washington Nationals, is in West Palm Beach. Dave had seen them there on a previous trip to Florida but it was a new ballpark for DC.

We headed over to the CACTI Park of The Palm Beaches and watched the Nats take on the Miami Marlins. The Nats had been pretty terrible ever since winning the 2019 World Series and this game didn’t give us much hope for their near future. The Marlins scored their first two runs on a throwing error and a balk and it didn’t get much better after that.

1980 housemates reunion

A much more laid back atmosphere than the night before

After the Nats game we headed back to Miami. We still had several hours before the WBC game so we had time to have a nice, sit-down dinner. Andy had suggested a restaurant called Versailles and we were about to text Dan and Alyssa about it when Dan texted "Let's meet at this classic Cuban spot Versailles".

We met up with Dan, Alyssa and their friend Andrew outside the restaurant. Versailles has been one of the most famous Cuban restaurants in Miami since the early 1970s, attracting both locals and tourists. When we got there a protest against the Cuban government was happening on the sidewalk, which we understand is a fairly common occurrence there. It's an interesting looking place, with etched glass along the walls on the inside. The food and service were really good. After a delicious meal, we made our way back to the ballpark.

Versailles Restaurant

Two Guys with Andrew, Dan and Alyssa

The atmosphere the night before was pretty crazy. For the Venezuela-Japan game, it was off the charts. Unlike the night before, when the crowd was overwhelmingly rooting for the Dominican Republic, the split on Saturday night was about 50-50. Two EXTREMELY passionate groups of fans watching their teams play a winner-goes-on, loser-goes-home game.

Japan was the defending WBC champion. Most of the players from that team were back, including the world's best baseball player, Shohei Ohtani and the most recent World Series MVP, Yoshinobu Yamamoto. Going into the tournament, they were considered a good bet to repeat - the Dominican Republic and the U.S. were thought to be their main competition.

Venezuela had other ideas.

Shohei Ohtani at the plate

Japanese fans in centerfield. You could see them jumping
up and down from all over the ballpark all night long.

The game started with a bang. The game's first hitter, Ronald Acuna Jr. slammed a home run to give Venezuela an immediate 1-0 lead. Ohtani responded with a leadoff home run of his own in the bottom of the first to tie it. Japan scored four runs in the bottom of the third inning including a three-run homer by Shota Morishita, who had come into the game as an injury replacement. At that point it looked like they might cruise to victory.

But Maikel Garcia hit a two-run homer in the fifth to pull Venezuela within a run, then Wilyer Abreu hit a huge three-run shot in the sixth to give Venezuela the lead. After Japan's four-run third inning, Venezuela's bullpen shut them down the rest of the way, including striking out Ohtani with two runners on base and Japan trailing by two. The game ended with Ohtani flying out to centerfield.

Venezuela advanced to the semifinals for the first time since 2009 and Japan was eliminated. While no one questioned the quality of Venezuela's team, this was still a shocker. As of this writing, Japan is the only country to win the WBC more than once (three times) and this was the first time they'd ever been eliminated before the semifinals.

It was a fabulous game. The crowd was amazing - joyful, intense, passionate, friendly. We had Japanese fans to our right and Venezuelan fans to our left. We learned a new word - every time a Japanese player had two strikes on them, the Venezuelan contingent started chanting one word. We finally asked the woman next to us what they were saying. It was "pònchalo", which translates to "strike him out". The Venezuelans were gracious winners. When the game ended, the folks to our left thanked us for cheering with them (we were neutral, we cheered for both teams); the Japanese fans congratulated the Venezuelans and their response when we offered our condolences was that it had been a great game and a joy to watch.

Three days later Venezuela would cap off their amazing run by defeating the U.S. to win the 2026 World Baseball Classic.

Enthusiastic fans

Gracious fans

The next morning we once again drove up to West Palm Beach. We were flying out of there in order to fit in a visit with Dave's good friends Nikki and Matt.

We had a nice breakfast and hang with them. Dave was telling them how much fun we'd had the previous two days. Nikki asked "How often do they do this thing?"

"Every three or four years."

"So... we'll be seeing you again in three or four years?"

We believe they will.

Two Guys, Nikki and Matt