MIAMI — The man with USA across his chest who got the final three outs of the World Baseball Classic semifinal on Sunday will be wearing a Padres uniform again soon.
But Mason Miller and the United States have one more game here — in the WBC finals after beating the Dominican Republic 2-1 at loanDepot park.
Miller, the fifth U.S. reliever to work after Paul Skenes went 4⅔ innings, overcame a walk and ensuing wild pitch with one out in the ninth inning of a game between the two most talented teams to ever share a field.
“I expect it to be one of the best games of all time,” USA manager Mark DeRosa said shortly after the matchup was set.
It was not even worth debating whether what unfolded was all that.
It was full of delightful defensive plays and superlative pitching, and it was magnificently fraught to the end.
Every run came on a ball hit over the wall, and all of those happened in the first 3½ innings.
The D.R. entered the game having outscored its five WBC opponents by 41 runs.
The United States pitchers snuffed out five Dominican Republic rallies, including when former Padres reliever David Bednar struck out Padres outfielder Fernando Tatis Jr. and Ketel Marte with runners on second and third in the seventh inning and the ninth, which ended on Geraldo Perdomo’s strikeout looking with Tatis on deck.
Tatis, who entered the game two RBIs shy of tying the WBC record, was 1-for-4 and got thrown out at third base for the final out of the third inning. Padres teammate Manny Machado was 1-for-4 as well. The two Padres sluggers, along with reliever Wandy Peralta, who did not pitch Sunday, will return to Peoria, Ariz., for spring training sooner than they hoped.
The U.S. will play Tuesday night against the winner of Monday’s semifinal between Venezuela and Italy, which has Padres relievers Alek Jacob and Ron Marinaccio in its bullpen and former Padres coach Francisco Cervelli as its manager.
One or both of the two games left in the tournament might turn out to be classics, but they will not light up the marquee the way Sunday’s matchup did.
“This is what you dream about as a kid, playing with the best of the best,” Aaron Judge, the United States captain, said before the game. “We’ve got the best squad out there. They’ve got the best squad out there.”
The amount of talent on the field at the same time was, indeed, surreal.
Team USA’s starting 10 had eight players ranked among the top 41 in the major leagues by MLB Network this offseason. Nine of the Dominican Republic’s starters were ranked in the top 39.
The combined 2025 WAR (wins above replacement) of Sunday’s starters was 95.8. That was just two points lower than the combined 2025 WAR for the starting lineups in last year’s All-Star game.
And this was no exhibition to the participants.
This was a meeting of the country that invented baseball and used to call the game its pastime and the tiny island nation that grows baseball players the way it does tobacco and sugar.
There seemed little doubt, however, that this year’s WBC was more important than ever to the American players. This is by far the most star-studded USA roster. In particular, the country’s top starting pitchers volunteered more than in any previous WBC. Skenes was making his second start in this year’s tournament.
Much of Sunday night featured a baseball game played in the middle of a concert put on by a dozen marching bands playing at 100 birthday parties.
Dominican fans accounted for three-quarters of the crowd and at times sounded like they had filled the entire stadium and another one just outside loanDepot park.
They stood when their pitcher got two strikes on a batter and roared when he got the third.
It wasn’t just that they stood and that they roared. They danced and jumped. They banged instruments and blew into horns and whistles.
Those cheering for the United States were more staid, like their team’s players.
Skenes began the game by getting five outs on 14 pitches before leaving a 1-2 sweeper up in the zone that Junior Caminero sent off the ribbon scoreboard beyond left field, as his teammates swarmed from the dugout to dance and holler as they waited for him to circle the bases.
Caminero’s sprint included several mid-stride hops and fist pumps and exhortations to the crowd. And when he arrived home, there were no less than four choreographed handshake celebrations, a group pose and the donning of a red, white and blue leather jacket.
And then Perdomo rode to the dugout on Tatis’ back.
Two innings later, Team USA got its first two runs in the same manner but offered a contrast in styles.
When Gunnar Henderson launched the ninth pitch of his at-bat leading off the fourth inning 400 feet and over the wall in right-center field to tie the game and then, with one out, Roman Anthony greeted reliever Gregory Soto with a 421-foot homer slightly more toward center field to give the United States a 2-1 lead, his teammates met him on the field as well.
They were not as close to the plate, and the high-fives were just the standard variety and no one rode anyone else back to the dugout.
“It’s funny to think about the American way of baseball and the Dominican way of baseball and all this kind of stuff,” Team USA’s Bryce Harper said Sunday afternoon, responding to a question about the energy of the Dominican team. “But it’s awesome to see all these cultures come together from Asia to Latin countries to America. That’s what’s so great about our game. Japan plays a certain game. America plays a certain game. Latin American countries play a certain game. We’re all in this tournament feeding off of playing a great game, and that’s what makes our game so great is (that) there’s so many different cultures that play this game.
“I can’t dance a lick like Tatis can, but I have fun playing this game.”