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  "path": "/team-usa-lost-for-the-troops",
  "publishedAt": "2026-03-18T13:04:27.000Z",
  "site": "https://defector.com",
  "tags": [
    "MLB",
    "2026 world baseball classic",
    "baseball",
    "team usa",
    "Venezuela",
    "World Baseball Classic"
  ],
  "textContent": "And here we see a shining example of the main peril of using sports as a reason to wrap oneself in the flag. When you look down and see that you've lost your pants, the flag makes a poor trouser substitute.\n\nBut hey, it's the risk you run when you play that game, as Team USA and its main broadcast partner, Fox, learned to their embarrassment during Tuesday's final of the World Baseball Classic. They assumed the best would happen because they were the United States of Baseball and their opponents were just Venezuela, whose government our government just overthrew for no real reason beyond boredom and the capacity to do so, only to find out that in baseball, if you have a choice between patriotism and a nasty bullpen, the wiser choice is to take the bullpen and skip the anthem.\n\nLet's explain this in simpler terms. The better team won, 3-2, because its most important players made the most of their moments. Other than one thigh-high changeup that Bryce Harper T-shirt-cannoned beyond the center field wall in the eighth inning to offer the U.S. a 2-2 tie and the escape hatch it had not deserved, the Americans were owned on their own soil before a predominantly hostile crowd. Let that sentence rattle around your brain as needed. The home team was owned by the other guys' fans, and then owned decisively by the other guys. The best you can say about Harper's homer is that it almost led to an injustice. The better team won, and did so on the merits.",
  "title": "Team USA Lost For The Troops"
}