Boston Red Sox closer Aroldis Chapman, the lefty flame-thrower nicknamed the \u201cThe Cuban Missile,\u201d could be pitching for Great Britain in the 2026 World Baseball Classic. Chapman, who turns 38 this winter, is on Great Britain\u2019s preliminary roster for the 2026 WBC, according to journalist Francys Romero, and is awaiting approval from the Red Sox to participate.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou don\u2019t know \u2019til you know,\u201d Great Britain manager Bradley Marcelino said Tuesday at MLB\u2019s Winter Meetings. \u201cYou hear good things. You hear the interest level. We\u2019re very optimistic. But in this environment you don\u2019t want to get too far ahead because there\u2019s the (MLB) team, the eligibility part, all those things that you have to continue to work through.\u201d<\/p>\n
Chapman pitched in the 2009 WBC for his native Cuba, mere months before defecting during a tournament in the Netherlands, and has not appeared in a WBC since. Gary Anderson, performance director for the Great Britain team, explained that Chapman is eligible to play for Great Britain \u201cthrough heritage through British overseas territories with his family.\u201d Chapman\u2019s paternal grandparents emigrated to Cuba from Jamaica, which was a British colony until 1962.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Boston Red Sox closer Aroldis Chapman, the lefty flame-thrower nicknamed the \u201cThe Cuban Missile,\u201d could be pitching for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":340034,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[363,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-340033","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-mlb","9":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340033","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=340033"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340033\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/340034"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=340033"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=340033"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=340033"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}