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Rosenthal: With Shohei Ohtani vs. Mike Trout, WBC scripts the perfect ending as Japan beats USA - The Athletic
Mar 22, 2023 1 min, 0 secs
The two best players in the world, who happen to be teammates with the perennially disappointing Angels, created a forever moment Tuesday night.

Prior to the game, Japan manager Hideki Kuriyama gave no indication of how he planned to use Ohtani or the other starter who preceded him in relief, Yu Darvish.

The manager’s decision to start left-hander Shota Imanaga only added to the intrigue surrounding Japan’s pitching, considering four of the game’s best right-handed sluggers were at the top of the U.S. lineup.

He didn’t come close to hitting in the eighth, and he told me in his postgame interview on FS1 that a replay at the end of the inning gave him time to walk slowly to the mound.

Or, as DeRosa put it, “What he’s doing in the game is what probably 90 percent of the guys in that clubhouse did in Little League or in youth tournaments, and he’s able to pull it off on the biggest stages.”

And in the end, everything fell into place for Ohtani to face Trout, as if someone was indeed writing a script, the kind of tidy narrative the baseball gods almost always seem to mock.

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