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Jeff PassanESPN
MIAMI — Truly understanding what the World Baseball Classic means took a little while for Team USA, which at its first workout March 7 realized it was far less a team than a collection of players who hoped to become one. The players looked around at one another, marveled at the talent and realized they’d be sharing locker rooms and meals — and perhaps an airplane ride to the knockout round — and they recognized the only thing that could coalesce them was time. Only winning would grant them that luxury.
Halfway across the globe, Samurai Japan, the top-ranked national team in the world, was on its 19th day together. The Japanese WBC team, comprising the biggest stars in Nippon Professional Baseball and top major leaguers, had played four exhibition games over the previous two weeks, which followed four more it had played in November, which came after it had won gold medals at the Tokyo Olympics in July 2021. This was a real team, battle-tested, forged in competition, beloved by a country where half the televisions would tune in to see it try to win Japan’s first WBC title since 2009.
The WBC final, which LoanDepot Park will host at 7 p.m. ET on Tuesday, brings together a pair of squads with decidedly different backgrounds. It’s the perfect foundation for two countries with contrasting styles and philosophical approaches to the game. The United States is here on the strength of its ability, which overwhelmed lesser opponents even with the reality that baseball is the sport ripest for Davids toppling Goliaths. Japan, though filled with world-class players, spent years preparing for this, determined to right the wrongs of losses in the past two WBC semifinals and return to championship glory.
“We came here to the U.S., and we are trying to beat the U.S.,” Japan manager Hideki Kuriyama said upon arriving in Miami, before either team had won its semifinal game. “Not just myself. I think I’m representing all my players from the past and the coaches. So I think we’re all in the mind of coming to the U.S. and we will beat the U.S.”
For all of the phenomenal individual matchups the final might offer — none as tantalizing as the possibility of Shohei Ohtani preparing to close out a victory for Japan with his Los Angeles Angels teammate Mike Trout standing in the batter’s box facing him — the truest representation of the WBC is how so many of its participants share Samurai Japan’s win-win-win ethos after experiencing the tournament. They care. They care deeply.
Now, too, Team USA finally feels like a team. In the time since March 7, the U.S. has won, then lost, then won and won and won and won. And winning in the sort of environment these games foment — loud and passionate, a baseball audience more resembling the playoffs in October than the exhibition the WBC, at its essence, actually is — has brought them together, and back to a simpler time.
This, American players have said this week, feels like the baseball of their teenage years, when they would gather with other elite players from around the country for select tournaments and try to fuse into something more in short order. It’s not easy. As much as baseball is a series of individual matchups — every pitch entails a hitter trying to beat a pitcher — the soul of the game is in the flow of what happens when bat meets ball. How they move together and communicate less with words than glances. A baseball team is truly a team when the players know one another’s tendencies well enough to forgo even a look and simply feel where someone will be on the field.
Surviving a pool-play scare after a loss to Mexico bought Team USA the time it desired and needed. And after the flight from Phoenix to Miami, manager Mark DeRosa noticed a change in the group — a comfort with one another, with coaching luminaries including Ken Griffey Jr. and Andy Pettitte and Brian McCann and Michael Young, with the idea that this bracket that didn’t end with one team being fitted for World Series rings could still deliver games that meant everything. Because it feels like they do.
“It’s really been such a pleasure to be around them, and it takes a minute for them to relax and not want to impress each other,” DeRosa said. “That’s the biggest thing. Like, the cage sessions have gotten way more relaxed and way more fun and jovial, and the guys are messing around with Griff and Mac and Mike Young.”
There’s a deep appeal to this, in the challenge and the charm of it, and the MLB stars who populated rosters across the tournament, winners and losers, have marveled at the WBC’s ability to make them as invested in the results of these games as they are in the ones in October. One night after they dusted Cuba in their own semifinal, the members of Team USA watched Japan’s spectacular come-from-behind victory against Mexico on Monday night, coming together like a bunch of friends for a watch party.
The U.S. is peaking at the right time. After the blowout against Cuba, the entire bullpen, including Milwaukee Brewers closer Devin Williams and Houston Astros closer Ryan Pressly, is working with a day of rest. The lineup starts with Trout, Mookie Betts, Paul Goldschmidt and Nolan Arenado, is followed by four All-Star-caliber players of DeRosa’s choice and ends with red-hot Trea Turner. It’s the sort of challenge not even the best pitchers in the world can take on without butterflies colonizing their stomachs.
That’s whom they’ll be up against, though: Kuriyama tabbed left-hander Shota Imanaga to start the game and is pocketing San Diego Padres star Yu Darvish — who skipped spring training to be with the Japanese team for its early workouts — to use in midgame leverage situations. If Japan’s lineup — which includes Ohtani, Boston Red Sox rookie Masataka Yoshida and Japanese home run king Munetaka Murakami batting third, fourth and fifth — can get to presumed Team USA starter Merrill Kelly, Ohtani is the best bet to pitch the ninth in his first relief appearance since closing out a game in the 2016 NPB playoffs.
It’s easy to point out the flaws of the WBC. The timing isn’t great, with starting pitchers not stretched out and thus less likely to commit to such intense competition out of fear of hurting themselves. The injuries — New York Mets closer Edwin Díaz suffering a torn patellar tendon celebrating Puerto Rico beating the mighty Dominican Republic and Houston second baseman José Altuve breaking his thumb on an errant Daniel Bard fastball — are fuel for skeptics whose tanks otherwise grow emptier by the day.
What they don’t understand — what they actively choose not to understand — is that baseball is about more than Major League Baseball. It is truly a game for the world, from the U.S. to Japan to Cuba to Mexico to the D.R. to Puerto Rico to Venezuela and beyond. And the WBC has filled a vacuum that for too long existed, bringing together disparate baseball cultures and allowing them, too, to meld into something bigger and better.
“There’s no reason why the stars of our game should not be playing in this,” said Team USA third baseman Arenado, who is, along with St. Louis Cardinals teammate Goldschmidt, the only returning player from the 2017 championship group.
It’s safe to say that the 2026 incarnation of the WBC will have significantly more returnees. Trout, the Team USA captain, has developed a strong relationship with Betts, someone with whom he shares so much in common but never knew because their interactions were limited to the hustle and bustle of All-Star Games and occasional matchups between their teams. Both have pledged to return — and Bryce Harper, who had planned to play for Team USA until Tommy John surgery sidelined him, could join them and constitute an outfield of three future Hall of Famers.
The hope is that a generation of kids today is watching this WBC and gleaning indelible moments from it. It’s damn near impossible to see Turner’s go-ahead grand slam against Venezuela and not appreciate the deed itself. Down late, elimination looming, one of the best players in the world, relegated to the No. 9 hole on account of the brilliance surrounding him daily, taking a swing for the ages.
“These guys are the best at what they do, they’re ultimate competitors, and in an environment like that there is 100% buy-in,” DeRosa said. “It just happens organically. And to represent your country, it means the world. Maybe it doesn’t start out that way, but I mean, it has become that. These guys want it.”
Team USA will come together one final time Tuesday night. They’ll take their last bus ride to the stadium and hit the cages knowing there won’t be any more messing around with Griff and Mac and Young and button up their jerseys realizing the inevitability that three or so hours later, when they take them off, they’ll do so for good. Or at least for the next three years, at which point maybe they’ll gather in hopes they once again can put the “team” in Team USA.
The opening weekend of the 2025 MLB season was taken over by a surprise star — torpedo bats.
The bowling pin-shaped bats became the talk of the sport after the Yankees’ home run onslaught on the first Saturday of the season put it in the spotlight and the buzz hasn’t slowed since.
What exactly is a torpedo bat? How does it help hitters? And how is it legal? Let’s dig in.
Read: An MIT-educated professor, the Yankees and the bat that could be changing baseball
What is a torpedo bat and why is it different from a traditional MLB bat?
The idea of the torpedo bat is to take a size format — say, 34 inches and 32 ounces — and distribute the wood in a different geometric shape than the traditional form to ensure the fattest part of the bat is located where the player makes the most contact. Standard bats taper toward an end cap that is as thick diametrically as the sweet spot of the barrel. The torpedo bat moves some of the mass on the end of the bat about 6 to 7 inches lower, giving it a bowling-pin shape, with a much thinner end.
How does it help hitters?
The benefits for those who like swinging with it — and not everyone who has swung it likes it — are two-fold. Both are rooted in logic and physics. The first is that distributing more mass to the area of most frequent contact aligns with players’ swing patterns and provides greater impact when bat strikes ball. Players are perpetually seeking ways to barrel more balls, and while swings that connect on the end of the bat and toward the handle probably will have worse performance than with a traditional bat, that’s a tradeoff they’re willing to make for the additional slug. And as hitters know, slug is what pays.
The second benefit, in theory, is increased bat speed. Imagine a sledgehammer and a broomstick that both weigh 32 ounces. The sledgehammer’s weight is almost all at the end, whereas the broomstick’s is distributed evenly. Which is easier to swing fast? The broomstick, of course, because shape of the sledgehammer takes more strength and effort to move. By shedding some of the weight off the end of the torpedo bat and moving it toward the middle, hitters have found it swings very similarly to a traditional model but with slightly faster bat velocity.
Why did it become such a big story so early in the 2025 MLB season?
Because the New York Yankees hit nine home runs in a game Saturday and Michael Kay, their play-by-play announcer, pointed out that some of them came from hitters using a new bat shape. The fascination was immediate. While baseball, as an industry, has implemented forward-thinking rules in recent seasons, the modification to something so fundamental and known as the shape of a bat registered as bizarre. The initial response from many who saw it: How is this legal?
OK. How is this legal?
Major League Baseball’s bat regulations are relatively permissive. Currently, the rules allow for a maximum barrel diameter of 2.61 inches, a maximum length of 42 inches and a smooth and round shape. The lack of restrictions allows MLB’s authorized bat manufacturers to toy with bat geometry and for the results to still fall within the regulations.
Who came up with the idea of using them?
The notion of a bowling-pin-style bat has kicked around baseball for years. Some bat manufacturers made smaller versions as training tools. But the version that’s now infiltrating baseball goes back two years when a then-Yankees coach named Aaron Leanhardt started asking hitters how they should counteract the giant leaps in recent years made by pitchers.
When Yankees players responded that bigger barrels would help, Leanhardt — an MIT-educated former Michigan physics professor who left academia to work in the sports industry — recognized that as long as bats stayed within MLB parameters, he could change their geometry to make them a reality. Leanhardt, who left the Yankees to serve as major league field coordinator for the Miami Marlins over the winter, worked with bat manufacturers throughout the 2023 and 2024 seasons to make that a reality.
When did it first appear in MLB games?
It’s unclear specifically when. But Yankees slugger Giancarlo Stanton used a torpedo bat last year and went on a home run-hitting rampage in October that helped send the Yankees to the World Series. New York Mets star Francisco Lindor also used a torpedo-style bat last year and went on to finish second in National League MVP voting.
Who are some of the other notable early users of torpedo bats?
In addition to Stanton and Lindor, Yankees hitters Anthony Volpe, Austin Wells, Jazz Chisholm Jr., Cody Bellinger and Paul Goldschmidt have used torpedoes to great success. Others who have used them in games include Tampa Bay’s Junior Caminero, Minnesota’s Ryan Jeffers and Toronto’s Davis Schneider. And that’s just the beginning. Hundreds more players are expected to test out torpedoes — and perhaps use them in games — in the coming weeks.
How is this different from a corked bat?
Corking bats involves drilling a hole at the end of the bat, filling it in and capping it. The use of altered bats allows players to swing faster because the material with which they replace the wood — whether it’s cork, superballs or another material — is lighter. Any sort of bat adulteration is illegal and, if found, results in suspension.
Could a rule be changed to ban them?
Could it happen? Sure. Leagues and governing bodies have put restrictions on equipment they believe fundamentally altered fairness. Stick curvature is limited in hockey. Full-body swimsuits made of polyurethane and neoprene are banned by World Aquatics. But officials at MLB have acknowledged that the game’s pendulum has swung significantly toward pitching in recent years, and if an offensive revolution comes about because of torpedo bats — and that is far from a guarantee — it could bring about more balance to the game. If that pendulum swings too far, MLB could alter its bat regulations, something it has done multiple times already this century.
So the torpedo bat is here to stay?
Absolutely. Bat manufacturers are cranking them out and shipping them to interested players with great urgency. Just how widely the torpedo bat is adopted is the question that will play out over the rest of the season. But it has piqued the curiosity of nearly every hitter in the big leagues, and just as pitchers toy with new pitches to see if they can marginally improve themselves, hitters will do the same with bats.
Comfort is paramount with a bat, so hitters will test them during batting practice and in cage sessions before unleashing them during the game. As time goes on, players will find specific shapes that are most comfortable to them and best suit their swing during bat-fitting sessions — similar to how golfers seek custom clubs. But make no mistake: This is an almost-overnight alteration of the game, and “traditional or torpedo” is a question every big leaguer going forward will ask himself.
ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — The once and possibly future home of the Tampa Bay Rays will get a new roof to replace the one shredded by Hurricane Milton with the goal of having the ballpark ready for the 2026 season, city officials decided in a vote Thursday.
The St. Petersburg City Council voted 7-1 to approve $22.5 million to begin the repairs at Tropicana Field, which will start with a membrane roof that must be in place before other work can continue. Although the Rays pulled out of a planned $1.3 billion new stadium deal, the city is still contractually obligated to fix the Trop.
“We are legally bound by an agreement. The agreement requires us to fix the stadium,” said council member Lissett Hanewicz, who is an attorney. “We need to go forward with the roof repair so we can do the other repairs.”
The hurricane damage forced the Rays to play home games this season at Steinbrenner Field across the bay in Tampa, the spring training home of the New York Yankees. The Rays went 4-2 on their first homestand ever at an open-air ballpark, which seats around 11,000 fans.
Under the current agreement with the city, the Rays owe three more seasons at the Trop once it’s ready again for baseball, through 2028. It’s unclear if the Rays will maintain a long-term commitment to the city or look to Tampa or someplace else for a new stadium. Major League Baseball has said keeping the team in the Tampa Bay region is a priority. The Rays have played at the Trop since their inception in 1998.
The team said it would have a statement on the vote later Thursday.
The overall cost of Tropicana Field repairs is estimated at $56 million, said city architect Raul Quintana. After the roof, the work includes fixing the playing surface, ensuring audio and visual electronics are working, installing flooring and drywall, getting concession stands running and other issues.
“This is a very complex project. We feel like we’re in a good place,” Quintana said at the council meeting Thursday.
Under the proposed timeline, the roof installation will take about 10 months. The unique membrane system is fabricated in Germany and assembled in China, Quintana said, adding that officials are examining how President Donald Trump’s new tariffs might affect the cost.
The new roof, he added, will be able to withstand hurricane winds as high as 165 mph. Hurricane Milton, one of the strongest hurricanes ever in the Atlantic basin at one point, blasted ashore Oct. 9 south of Tampa Bay with Category 3 winds of about 125 mph.
Citing mounting costs, the Rays last month pulled out of a deal with the city and Pinellas County for a new $1.3 billion ballpark to be built near the Trop site. That was part of a broader $6.5 billion project known as the Historic Gas Plant district to bring housing, retail and restaurants, arts and a Black history museum to a once-thriving Black neighborhood razed for the original stadium.
The city council plans to vote on additional Trop repair costs over the next few months.
“This is our contractual obligation. I don’t like it more than anybody else. I’d much rather be spending that money on hurricane recovery and helping residents in the most affected neighborhoods,” council member Brandi Gabbard said. “These are the cards that we’re dealt.”
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Adam Rittenberg
Tulane quarterback TJ Finley has been suspended following his arrest Wednesday in New Orleans on a charge of illegal possession of stolen things worth more than $25,000.
Finley, 23, whose name is Tyler Jamal, was booked and released. Tulane said in a statement that the length of the suspension will depend on the outcome of his case. The school cited privacy laws in declining to comment further.
University police responded Wednesday to an address where a truck was blocking a driveway. After looking up the license plate, police saw it registered to a vehicle stolen in Atlanta. Finley arrived to move the car and informed the officer that he had bought the truck recently. He’s scheduled to appear in court June 1.
Finley transferred to Tulane in December after spending the 2024 season with Western Kentucky. He had been competing for the team’s starting quarterback job in spring practice alongside fellow transfers Kadin Semonza and Donovan Leary.
Finley, a native of Ponchatoula, Louisiana, started his college career at LSU before transferring to Auburn for two seasons and then Texas State in 2023. He started five games for both LSU and Auburn but had his most success with Texas State, passing for 3,439 yards and 24 touchdowns.
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