Venezuela’s Comeback Ends Italy’s WBC Run, Sets Up Final vs. Team USA

Ronald Acuña Jr. sparked a seventh-inning rally that put his country one win away from its first World Baseball Classic championship.

Ronald Acuña Jr. drove in the tying run of Venezuela’s game-winning rally in the seventh inning. | Sam Navarro-Imagn Images

MIAMI — Ronald Acuña Jr. has won a Rookie of the Year Award and a Most Valuable Player Award. He has stolen 73 bases in a season. He owns a World Series ring. As Monday night bled into Tuesday, as he looked back on Venezuela’s 4–2 win over Italy in the World Baseball Classic semifinals and ahead to its date with the United States in the final, none of those past accomplishments particularly interested him. 

“I would put this as number one in my career,” he said in Spanish through an interpreter. “I love the Atlanta Braves, but before playing for the Braves, I was born in Venezuela.”

It was Venezuela that produced Acuña, and it is Acuña who has produced for Venezuela, keying his country to its first berth in the title game. The victory pits juggernaut against juggernaut, two of the top three countries by major league rosters. (In 2025, the U.S. had 689, the Dominican Republic 100 and Venezuela 63.) Although it will be staged in the United States, and the Americans won a coin flip and will bat last, both sides expect Venezuela to feel like the home team. 

It certainly was on Monday, when the sellout crowd of 35,382 seemed to live and die with every pitch. Many Venezuelan journalists have remarked that the team’s run has been especially welcome amid a time of political instability, after the U.S. military captured then-president Nicolás Maduro on Jan. 3. The players have tried their best to stay out of it, but they know the fans need some relief. 

“Our country deserves the game tomorrow,” said Acuña. 

It was his seventh-inning single that got them there. Down 2–1 with two outs and runners on first and third, Acuña beat out a bouncer to shortstop. Andrés Giménez dashed home, and Acuña just kept going, high-stepping into right field and beating his chest. His teammates hurdled the dugout rail and reached first base before he turned around and made it back. Venezuela took the lead a batter later, and that was it. 

RONALD ACUÑA JR. TIES THIS GAME 😤 pic.twitter.com/nz1z9ijWRB

— World Baseball Classic (@WBCBaseball) March 17, 2026

The victory put an end to the most unlikely run in the history of the tournament, that of a country whose language does not even have its own word for baseball. 

This group was unlikely in part because only three of the 30 players actually hail from the Bel Paese. Most of the rest, as captain Vinnie Pasquantino elegantly put it, are “a lot of stereotypical Italians … a lot of guys from Jersey.” Pasquantino himself grew up in Richmond, Va., but like his teammates, nearly all of whom were born in the United States, he leaned into his heritage. Players celebrated home runs by chugging shots of espresso, kissing one another on the cheek and donning an Armani jacket. They sang Andrea Bocelli and punctuated wins with glasses of red wine. 

They began the tournament as something of a joke internationally—the Team USA JV, you might say, full of players who couldn’t make the varsity squad. But until Monday, they had run the table, including an 8–6 win over the Americans that Italy manager Francisco Cervelli called “one of the best days of my life.”

Italy starting pitcher Aaron Nola held Venezuela to one run over four innings. | Sam Navarro-Imagn Images

On Monday, it seemed at first as if the Italians might keep knocking off favorites. They pulled off a bit of inganno in the first when Luis Arraez lined a ball to center field with Maikel Garcia on first and one out. Shortstop Sam Antonacci and second baseman Jon Berti pantomimed a groundball double play; Franco, thinking he was already out, slowed enough that center fielder Jakob Marsee could double him off to end the inning. 

In the second, Italy strung together two runs on a single, three straight walks and a groundout. Meanwhile, Italy righty Aaron Nola was holding Venezuela scoreless through three. But with one out in the fourth, Venezuela DH Eugenio Suárez, who plays with a flair for the, deposited a curveball over the wall in left-center in the fourth.

Nola got out of the inning, and Cervelli summoned Michael Lorenzen, who had originally been scheduled to start on Monday before Cervelli said his “gut” told him to go with Nola. Cervelli’s gut seemed to have been right on: Lorenzen got eight outs before unraveling in the seventh: a single to center by Jackson Chourio, that Acuña groundball, a Garcia single to left, a single to center by Arraez. By the time Kyle Nicolas got Suárez to fly out to end the inning, the game was all but over and loanDepot Park was all but shaking. 

The final two frames served mostly as coronation. The sellout crowd of 35,382 in the city got louder with every strike and erupted when Daniel Palencia struck out Antonacci to end it. The relievers raced in from the bullpen, nearly every one of them draped in the Venezuelan flag. As the players exchanged handshakes, many screamed and hugged. Acuña just nodded. He was already looking toward the championship.

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