ORLANDO, Fla. — The World Baseball Classic has been around long enough now to have its own mythology. It launched in 2006. It survived skepticism, hand-wringing, and a handful of spring-training managers wishing it would just go away. And yet, somehow, every three or four years, it finds a way to become one of the most electric baseball events on Earth.
Team USA has played a big role in that. They keep treating the WBC like it matters — with lineups that look like All-Star rosters, with the kind of urgency that only comes with playing for something bigger than a division title, and with moments that still reverberate years later.
But beyond the star power, beyond the highlights, beyond Schwarber’s home run in 2023 that might still be orbiting somewhere over Miami, a bigger question lingers:
What does this mean for the next generation?
For the kids who could fall in love with baseball because of this — or not at all?
That’s the idea that grabbed Team USA manager Mark DeRosa, a Jersey native and University of Pennsylvania product, when asked what a 10-year-old kid in inner-city Philadelphia should take away from watching Team USA next spring.
“Oh my God — I hope they see the passion, the desire, the pride in your country, and our best players out there,” DeRosa said. “And I hope it makes them run in the backyard and start swinging a bat. That’s what I did. I watched guys like Darryl Strawberry and Don Mattingly, then ran outside and tried to emulate them. I hope it puts stars in their eyes.”
Michael Hill, MLB’s senior vice president of on-field operations, didn’t wait for the question to finish before nodding along.
“No doubt. I don’t know if you can say it any better,” Hill said. “We’re both fans of the game. We’ve devoted our careers to this game, and tournaments like the WBC — those are the seeds, the sparks, that hopefully grow the next generation and generations to come.”
Then he expanded, almost as if he’d been waiting years to articulate what the WBC means to the people who work in baseball every day.
“That’s what this tournament is demonstrating,” Hill said. “The world needs to see our best. We have a great game. We have a great global game. We love this game of baseball — we’ve both dedicated our lives to this game. Being a part of this tournament is so exciting for us because you get to see the best players on display competing for their countries.”
For Hill, the WBC is baseball’s loudest megaphone — one built not for traditionalists, but for kids who discover the sport in 15-second bursts. Kids who don’t always watch games the way DeRosa did growing up in Passaic.
“I’ve got a 16-year-old son,” DeRosa said. “To get him to watch a full nine-inning game is a siege. It’s tough. But he gets blasted on TikTok. He comes running downstairs: ‘Dad, did you see this homer? Did you see this swing?’ I love the idea of creating something where kids want to watch baseball again.”
And if anything can pull them in, it’s the WBC - a tournament built on adrenaline and immediacy.
You don’t need to know WAR, OPS+, or chase rates.
You just need one moment.
Schwarber’s homer.
Turner’s grand slam.
Trout vs. Ohtani — a matchup that felt like it belonged in Cooperstown, not March.
Kids don’t forget moments like that.
And for a kid in Philadelphia, a city where baseball sits at the intersection of neighborhood pride, culture, and escape, this is the kind of thing that can spark a dream. The kind of moment that sends a 10-year-old racing to their backyard with a plastic bat, imagining the crowd roaring somewhere far beyond the rowhomes.
That, DeRosa said, is what the WBC can do better than almost anything baseball has right now.
“It’s about creating something,” he said, “where kids want to watch baseball again.”
Next March, Team USA will chase another title. But the stakes go beyond the trophy.
The WBC will try to win something baseball needs even more —
the next generation.
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