Mentally Ill Former Navy SEAL Inspires Team USA To WBC Final

Team USA had an uninspiring showing during pool play at this year's World Baseball Classic, and thanks to manager Mark DeRosa's struggles with math, needed a little bit of luck to make it to the quarterfinals. But now, after victories over Canada and the Dominican Republic, the Americans are headed to the final. Perhaps they have former SEAL Team Six member Robert O'Neill to thank for their good run of form. O'Neill visited the players in the locker room at some point before Friday's 5-3 victory over Canada. A snippet of O'Neill's pep talk, which featured him detailing the 2011 raid that killed Osama bin Laden with all the panache of a coworker recapping his weekend, was posted online before Friday's game. O'Neill, who claims to have shot and killed bin Laden, was an odd choice for locker-room motivator given what he's been up to since leaving the armed forces more than a decade ago. O'Neill is part of a cohort of former special forces operators who spend all of their time writing books and making podcast appearances in which they accuse each other of lying about their service records. He is also the guy who tweeted "You’re not men. You’re boys. If there was no social media, you would be my concubines," at a group of young male Kamala Harris voters in 2024. He has been banned from Delta Airlines and arrested for DUI, public intoxication, and misdemeanor assault. His tweets remain awful. Team USA applied O'Neill's lessons in a two-run victory over Canada on Friday, and then emerged from Sunday's tense, highly competitive game against the Dominican Republic with a 2-1 win. Paul Skenes started for the Americans, working around a Junior Caminero solo shot in the second inning to hold the Dominicans' stacked lineup to just six hits and one run in 4.1 innings. Team USA struck back in the fourth inning with solo homers from Gunnar Henderson and Roman Anthony, and then it was time for a procession of meaty boys to emerge from the bullpen and protect Team USA's lead.