Can Team Israel do it again?
The team won a play-in tournament to get into the 2017 World Baseball Classic as the 16th and final seed, swept the first round of games including victories over South Korea (No. 3) and Chinese Taipei (No. 4), and upset No. 5 Cuba before the magic ran out.
At an opening press conference in Miami, members of the 2026 squad offered this answer to the opening question: Why not?
“Just from a baseball perspective, it’s a sprint,” said Brad Ausmus, the team’s manager. “You’ve got to go after the other team, and anything can happen in one game. Maybe not best of seven, but anything can happen in one game.”
“That’s kind of the approach we have to take,” he said.
Team Israel likely would have to defeat either the Dominican Republic (No. 2) or Venezuela (No. 4) to advance—a difficult but not impossible task.
“We don’t have to win eight out of 10 games,” Ausmus said. “We have to win one game, and if you have a couple guys who have good games, a couple pitchers have good games, you come up with a big hit, you have a chance, because it’s baseball.”
“It’s going to be a challenge, but we’re not rolling over,” he said.
Team Israel’s first game is scheduled for 7 p.m. Miami time on Saturday against Venezuela. Ben Simon, a minor leaguer in the New York Mets system, is scheduled to start, followed by Dean Kremer, of the Baltimore Orioles, on Sunday against Nicaragua.
The squad is a mix of World Baseball Classic veterans and newcomers, all of whom learn from one another. Education is a fundamental Jewish principle from the Torah, including in Deuteronomy 6:7, part of the Shema, which instructs to “teach them to your children.”
“I’m always open to answer questions or to answer anything that they may have, try to impart any sort of wisdom if I have any,” Kremer said.
That can be especially valuable to the pitchers as they prepare to face opponents, whom they’ve never seen before.
“I can help a little bit, and our pitching coach, Brad Goldberg—he’s also pitched in the big leagues a little bit,” Kremer said of the bullpen coach for the Cleveland Guardians, the team formerly known as the Indians.
“He’s got plenty of experience, as well, putting scouting reports together for those guys,” Kremer said. “I think we’re going to give them hell.”
Kremer, catcher Garrett Stubbs, of the Philadelphia Phillies, and infielder Spencer Horwitz, of the Pittsburgh Pirates, have played in the World Baseball Classic before, and Ausmus said that their experience will be invaluable.
“It is a playoff atmosphere,” Ausmus said. “There’s a lot of energy. We have young guys, who have not done it before. Controlling the emotions, controlling the adrenaline is a big part, and I think when you see guys in the moment, like a catcher in Garrett or Dean on the mound calmly approaching his craft, I think that can be contagious.”
“It can help the team play with a calmness but a focus,” he said.
In 2023, Team Israel won just one game in the first round, but that was enough to guarantee an automatic entry into this year’s tournament. The excitement surrounding the World Baseball Classic led players to want to be a part of it.
Horwitz said that Ausmus and coach Kevin Youkilis were invaluable to him the last time around.
“They have unbelievable experience, unbelievable wisdom,” he said. “I was just picking their brains in the locker room while we were eating breakfast. They have tremendous wisdom, tremendous experience, and they’ve done it at the highest level for a really long time. Hopefully I can just be a sponge and soak it up from them.”
“Yeah, what Spencer said,” interjected Harrison Bader, an outfielder for the San Francisco Giants who is playing for the Israeli team. “You never know in baseball where you’re going to pick up something.”
“In baseball, you’re never done learning,” he said. “You’re never done practicing. You’re never done trying to be the best version of yourself, whether it’s year one or at the end of your career.”
Even the younger players have something to teach older teammates, according to Bader.
“I think there’s also some players that I can learn from that aren’t necessarily in the major leagues that remind you of how special it is to simply suit up and go out there and represent a team,” he said.
“That’s what this is all about. This stage, everything we’re playing for is so much bigger than any individual,” he said. “We have to realize that and understand it. It is very special.”
Those lessons will remain with the players long after the tournament is over, according to Horwitz.
“There’s going to be some moments of doubt, some moments of fear,” he said. “But just fully embrace it and know that you’re going to learn a lot from it, and it’s going to help you a lot in the long run of your career, and really lean into each other.”
“That’s what helped me the most last time I was here when we were playing in front of 40,000 Dominican fans and 200 Israeli fans,” Horowitz said. “It’s a really eye-opening experience, and it’s a really unique situation to play in this tournament, and it will really, really help you in your career.”
So could this year be more like 2017?
“I think this team can do something special and come together,” Horwitz said. “I think that my favorite part was the brotherhood that was created in ’23 and being able to see these guys in the locker room. Everyone is super excited to get back out there.”
