MIAMI — “My kingdom for a horse.”
Five hundred forty-one years after Richard III pleaded for safety as defeat loomed at the Battle of Bosworth Field, Andruw Jones, wearing the embroidered crown as manager of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, could have revised one of Shakespeare’s most memorable lines. It was the fifth inning. All was about to be lost. And he had no horse.
A star-studded Venezuela team held a 2–1 lead Friday in World Baseball Classic Pool D play. Its next six hitters all were All-Stars making a combined $118 million. Horseless, Jones to stem the charge had only righthanders Jaydenn Estanista, a 24-year-old Phillies prospect from Curacao who has walked six batters every nine innings in his minor league career, and Eric Mendez, a 26-year-old from Aruba who throws 88 mph and last pitched in affiliated baseball three years ago.
Like the end of the War of the Roses, the outcome was inevitable. Venezuela’s punishing lineup hung up four runs before the inning was over and rolled to a 6–2 victory. The game featured all the quirkiness, madness, weirdness and, most of all, patriotism that makes the WBC a gift, like baseball Christmas in March.
“A rainforest lineup,” was how Red Sox first baseman Willson Contreras described the deluge from the Venezuela depth, at least in the translated version.
“I’m emotional,” said Luis Arráez about drawing the No. 3 spot in manager Omar López’s lineup, “because I’m behind [Ronald] Acuña and ahead of [Contreras]. I’m very proud of that.”
Watching the WBC, you delightfully forget all about baseball as you know it to be these days—full of power, robotic bullpen usage, a conservation of emotions—and just sit back and enjoy the oddities, if not the nostalgic nod to 1980s baseball. Relievers throwing 88? Bunt-a-palooza? You want weird? How about this menu:
- Contreras rapped a two-run single in the breakthrough fifth inning on an 88.5-mph sinker—his first hit against a sinker that slow in four years, dating to a single off Anibal Sanchez, the kind of junkballer that the Velocity Era made extinct.
- Maikel Garcia, the No. 2 hitter in the stacked Venezuela lineup, he of the breakout year for Kansas City last year, bunted in the fifth inning with two runners, no outs and a lead. Try that in the summer and the entire analytics department will be tapping their toes in wait in the manager’s office before the game is over. Netherlands second baseman Ozzie Albies apparently was so stunned he brain cramped and forgot to cover first.
- The Netherlands’ Sharlon Schoop, who turns 39 in April and has not played regularly since playing in Amsterdam in 2022, tried a sacrifice bunt in the sixth with his team down five runs.
It’s like pulling up to a community park in July and coming upon an American Legion tournament. The mismatches, like Mendez pitching to Contreras in a big spot, are part of the charm. Sometimes you even get a Czech electrician striking out Shohei Ohtani.
Outfielder Javier Sanoja hit a solo home run in the second inning to give Venezuela a 2–1 lead it wouldn’t relinquish. | Jim Rassol-Imagn Images
Truth be told, there are few horses in the WBC and the ones that do exist are limited by pitch counts, mandatory rest and club instructions. But that’s a feature, not a bug. The buy-in to play team baseball is off the charts when it comes to representing your country in such a small sample that one game, one inning, can be devastating if it breaks the wrong way. Just look at the players’ eyes when their national anthem is played, or the way they pour out of the dugout after every run is scored.
“It just feels different,” said Contreras, who is living a childhood dream by playing on his national team with his younger brother, Brewers catcher William Contreras. “You just do anything you can to help them team. I try to control my emotions. Many people know I can be emotional. But I did a good job of it today. I saw my brother being very calm and that helps me a lot. I want to be as calm as him, but I am not.”
The tournament this year is held during times of widespread geopolitical unrest, with teams wearing national colors and emblems that invite questions connecting baseball and real-world issues. López, for one, wasn’t biting on it after his team’s win.
“I don’t say anything about politics,” he said. “I work in baseball, not politics.”
Like Richard III on Bosworth Field, Jones did not have enough in his arsenal to stop Venezuela, a team that is motivated not just by national pride but also an unfulfilling WBC history. It has never reached the WBC finals. Only once, in 2009, did it reach the semis. Three times it did not make it out of pool play. In the last edition, riding a 4–0 record, it held a 7–5 lead over Team USA in the eighth inning, only to see Trea Turner send it home with a grand slam.
This time the Venezuelans appear as committed as Acuña was on the first pitch leading off the first inning: a 112-mph rocket of a double off a 98-mph fastball. It was a statement swing. They had 11 hits and struck out only four times.
As Arráez said, “I’m so very proud to be in this lineup. I’ll do anything Omar wants—even if I have to bring the water to the guys.”
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