With the world baseball classic wrapping up at the end of last month, there were lots of surprises and upsets. These are some of our biggest takeaways from the Classic. The World Baseball Classic is an event that happens every four years that has the best players from every country play against each other. There were 20 countries in this year’s event. The teams span from The US and the Dominican. To Chinese Taipei, and the Czech Republic. So there is a vast group of countries in the games. These teams are of all different skill levels. You have the US, Dominican, and Japan with MLB all-stars and stars in their home countries. Israel and the Czech Republic do not have any all-stars or even many people with MLB experience. The World Baseball Classic is known to be one of the most exhilarating events, with the fans always getting into it and having a blast. The Classic is full of exciting moments that keep fans on their feet.

The first round is a round-robin tournament where every team plays the other three teams in their bracket, and depending on how you do there, you may move on to the next round. Some teams like the favorite were eliminated in the round-robin stage, the Dominican didn’t even make it that far. The next round is the quarterfinals, where the two teams that had the best odds to win at that point, the USA and Japan were still fighting, and was soon gonna face each other in the finals.  The game was the most watched game in baseball history and was a back-and-forth battle between two of the best countries and best teams in baseball history, and it ended with Shohei Ohtani striking out his teammate Mike Trout on three straight fastballs all over 100mph and one pitch even hit 102. This was the pitch that immortalized Team Japan as the winner of the 2023 WBC and the best team of the time.