By RONALD BLUM AP Baseball Writer

MIAMI — Shohei Ohtani and Mike Trout had dreamed of this moment, along with millions of fans throughout Japan and the United States: the two biggest stars on the planet, longtime Angels teammates, facing each other at 60 feet, 6 inches, the world title at stake.

Of course, the count went full.

And then Ohtani got Trout to swing under a slider on the outside corner, sealing Japan’s 3-2 win Tuesday night and its first World Baseball Classic title since 2009.

“This is the best moment in my life,” Ohtani said through a translator.

Ohtani, the two-way star who has captivated fans across two continents, was voted MVP of the WBC after batting .435 with one homer, four doubles, eight RBIs and 10 walks while going 2-0 with a save and a 1.86 ERA on the mound, striking out 11 in 9-2/3 innings.

“I think every baseball fan wanted to see that. I’ve been answering questions about it for the last month-and a-half,” said Trout, Ohtani’s Angels teammate since 2018.

“Did you think it was going to end in any other way?”

Watching the eighth and ninth innings unfold, Japan first baseman Kazuma Okamoto was in disbelief.

“I thought it was like a Manga,” he said through an interpreter, referring to a Japanese comic book.

U.S. manager Mark DeRosa savored the matchup – except for the ending.

“I just would have liked to have seen Mike hit a 500-foot homer,” he said.

Ohtani had given a pregame pep talk in Japan’s clubhouse.

“Let’s stop admiring them,” he said, according to a translation of the video posted on the website Samurai Japan. “If you admire them, you can’t surpass them. We came here to surpass them, to reach the top. For one day, let’s throw away our admiration for them and just think about winning.”

Japan then joined the Dominican Republic in 2013 as the only unbeaten champions of baseball’s premier national team tournament. The Samurai Warriors went 7-0 and outscored opponents 56-18, reaching the final for the first time since winning the first two WBCs in 2006 and 2009. No other nation has won the title more than once.

Trea Turner put the U.S. ahead in the second against Shota Imanaga (1-0) with his fifth home run of the tournament, tying the WBC record set by South Korea’s Seung Yuop Lee in 2006.

Munetaka Murakami tied the score on the first pitch of the bottom half off Merrill Kelly (0-1) driving an up fastball 432 feet into the upper deck in right field, a 115.1 mph bullet. Murakami’s two-run walk-off double lifted Japan over Mexico, 6-5, in Monday night’s semifinal and his third-inning homer off Nick Martinez put Japan ahead in the 2021 gold medal game.

Japan loaded the bases and Lars Nootbaar, the El Segundo High and USC product who is the first non-Japanese-born player to appear for the Samurai Warriors, followed with a run-scoring groundout off Angels reliever Aaron Loup for a 2-1 lead.

Okamoto boosted the lead in the fourth when he sent a flat slider from Kyle Freeland over the wall in left-center for another solo homer. Kyle Schwarber pulled the Americans within a run when he went deep in the eighth off of Padres pitcher Yu Darvish.

Ohtani was Japan’s designated hitter and first went to the bullpen ahead of the sixth inning. He returned to the dugout and beat out an infield single in the seventh before again walking down the left field line to Japan’s bullpen and warming up for his third mound appearance of the tournament.

He walked major league batting champion Jeff McNeil to begin the ninth, then got Dodgers star Mookie Betts to ground into a double play.

That brought up Trout, the U.S. captain, a 10-time All-Star and a three-time American League MVP.

“I saw him take a big deep breath to try and control his emotions,” DeRosa said. “I can’t even imagine being in that moment, the two best players on the planet locking horns as teammates in that spot.”

Ohtani started with a slider low, then got Trout to swing through a 100 mph fastball. Another fastball sailed outside and Trout missed a 99.8 mph pitch over the middle. A 101.6 offering, the fastest of Ohtani’s 15 pitches, was low and way outside.

Ohtani stepped off the mound and blew on his pitching hand. He went back to an offspeed option, a slider.

Trout grimaced after his futile swing, his 12th strikeout of a tournament in which he hit .296 with one homer and seven RBIs. Ohtani raised both arms and threw his glove, then his cap, as teammates mobbed him.

Ohtani got his second career save, the first since a 2016 playoff game with the Pacific League’s Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters. He and Trout had hugged behind the batting cage during pregame workouts, then held their nation’s flags while leading their teams toward home plate in single file during the introductions, Trout down the right field line and Ohtani in left.

Several thousand fans had arrived hours early to watch Ohtani take batting practice and applauded when he hit a drive off the video board above the second deck in center field.

“What he’s doing in the game is what probably 90% 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,” DeRosa said. “He is a unicorn to the sport. I think other guys will try it, but I don’t think they’re going to do it to his level.”

WBC RETURNS IN SPRING 2026

The WBC will return for its sixth edition in March 2026, with organizers concluding spring training remains a better time than after the World Series or in the middle of the major league season.

Speaking before Tuesday night’s title game, MLB commissioner Rob Manfred said MLB owners and general managers have to be persuaded to make more star pitchers available to national teams.

Since its launch in 2006, the WBC has been played in March, ahead of club Opening Day in MLB, Japan and South Korea.

“We have talked about timing until your head hurts,” Manfred said. “There’s just no perfect time. You can’t really do it after the playoffs because so many players have been down. We have talked about something in the middle of the season. I think on balance, although it’s not perfect, this is probably the right place for it.”

Many MLB teams blocked pitchers from participating, wanting them to concentrate on preparing for the season’s start. U.S. pitchers had a 4.20 ERA in seven WBC games, allowed eight home runs and a tournament-high 59 hits.

“From a competitive perspective, I think the most important thing is we’re going to need to continue to work, particularly with our clubs, about pitching,” Manfred said. “Obviously, it’s great the guys we’ve had, but I think that I’d like to see pitching staffs that are of the same quality as our position players.”

“Pitching in a high-leverage situation like these are, that actually helps players develop, No. 1,” he added. “No. 2, that we staff the teams in a way that pitchers are used appropriately and the staffs of WBC communicate with the clubs about what’s going on with the individual players and make good judgments.”

U.S. manager Mark DeRosa said he told clubs that he would never have a pitcher warm up twice in the bullpen on the same day. Once a pitcher warms up, he had to enter the game then or not be used.

Two All-Stars players got hurt during the WBC. New York Mets closer Edwin Díaz injured a knee during a postgame celebration with Puerto Rico last week and had season-ending surgery. Houston Astros second baseman Jose Altuve broke his right thumb when he was hit by a pitch and needs an operation that will keep him sidelined for a period still to be announced.

“Maybe the best testimony to it is how the players, after the unfortunate injury that Díaz had, how the players came out and spoke in support of the tournament,” Manfred said. “It’s an indication that they really, really care about the event.”

He said the WBC will continue to take on the insurance of players participating with their national teams.

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“You can’t play this event without insuring the players,” he said. “It’s enough that the teams take the risk that somebody is going to be down, but to then say, oh, by the way, you get to pay for it, I don’t think that’s fair.”

Manfred is open to returning to Puerto Rico or possibly playing in the Dominican Republic. Every WBC edition has included games in Japan. Puerto Rico hosted in 2006, ’09 and ’13, Mexico in ’2009 and ’17, Taiwan in 2013 and this year and South Korea in 2017.

Unlike the World Cup in soccer, he doesn’t intend for the WBC to become a bigger event than MLB’s playoffs and World Series.

“I don’t foresee or actually want the tournament to be bigger than our traditional format,” he said. “The World Series is always going to be the World Series, but I don’t see it as an either/or proposition. This is a different kind of competition. We do it to grow the game and internationalize the game.”

MONEY MATTERS

Japan gets $3 million in prize money and the U.S. $1.7 million. Half of each goes to players, the other half to the national baseball federation.

UP NEXT

MLB openers are on March 30, the same day the season starts in Japan.

SHOHEI OHTANI STRIKES OUT MIKE TROUT TO WIN THE #WORLDBASEBALLCLASSIC! pic.twitter.com/F7vUtIiRR1

— MLB (@MLB) March 22, 2023

Trout vs Ohtani lived up to the HYPE! #WorldBaseballClassic pic.twitter.com/Z8aZAjpDRg

— World Baseball Classic (@WBCBaseball) March 22, 2023