{"id":518595,"date":"2026-03-12T06:46:12","date_gmt":"2026-03-12T06:46:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/518595\/"},"modified":"2026-03-12T06:46:12","modified_gmt":"2026-03-12T06:46:12","slug":"italy-helps-usa-advance-to-the-world-baseball-classic-quarterfinals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/518595\/","title":{"rendered":"Italy helps USA advance to the World Baseball Classic quarterfinals"},"content":{"rendered":"

Houston, Texas
\n AP
\n \u00a0\u2014\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n A day later than its manager originally proclaimed, the United States punched its ticket to the quarterfinals of the World Baseball Classic<\/a>.\n <\/p>\n

\n The Americans<\/a> got the help they needed from Italy and could start to relax by the middle innings as Italy routed Mexico 9-1 on Wednesday night, giving the Azzurri the top spot in Group B and assuring the Americans advancement as the second-place team.\n <\/p>\n

\n After Vinnie Pasquantino had the WBC\u2019s first three-homer game to lead the Italians to victory, the Kansas City Royals player had a message for the Americans.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cYou\u2019re welcome, U.S.A.,\u201d he said. \u201cWe were thinking of you guys over at your hotel. We were thinking of you guys. So I\u2019m glad you could join us in the party.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n Italy beat the US<\/a> 8-6 a night earlier, turning the Americans into spectators as they hoped to avoid elimination. The Italians \u2014 fielding a roster stacked with Americans of Italian heritage \u2014 finished 4-0 while the U.S. 3-1.\n <\/p>\n

\"Team<\/p>\n

\n Mexico (2-2), which lost to the US, was eliminated from the WBC and from qualifying for the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics.\n <\/p>\n

\n The Americans will stay in Houston to meet Canada, which advanced past first round for the first time, on Friday night. Italy will play Puerto Rico in the other quarterfinal at Daikin Park on Saturday.\n <\/p>\n

\n The US, with an All-Star-filled roster, also beat Britain and Brazil in group play.\n <\/p>\n

\n After the loss to Italy, US manager Mark DeRosa fielded questions about whether he thought his team had already secured a spot in the quarterfinals with Monday night\u2019s win over Mexico because of his comments on a television appearance the next morning.\n <\/p>\n

\n In that interview, he said: \u201cTon of respect for Italy \u2014 it\u2019s weird \u2014 we want to win this game even though our ticket\u2019s punched to the quarterfinals because Mexico plays Italy actually tomorrow. So, the way the schedule lines up this is an important game for us.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n DeRosa said he \u201cmisspoke\u201d in that interview and did not believe the team had already clinched a spot.\n <\/p>\n

\n Now that the Americans are in the quarterfinals, they know they need to win to move on to Miami.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Houston, Texas AP \u00a0\u2014\u00a0 A day later than its manager originally proclaimed, the United States punched its ticket…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":518596,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-518595","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/518595","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=518595"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/518595\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/518596"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=518595"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=518595"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=518595"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}