Bryce Harper's 432-Foot Homer Wasn't Enough: Venezuela Wins First World Baseball Classic Title

Venezuela claimed its first World Baseball Classic championship Tuesday night, holding off the United States 3-2 in a game that came down to the (gutwrenching) final swing and left one of Major League's Baseball's biggest stars holding the sport's cruelest consolation prize.

Bryce Harper's Home Run

In the bottom of the eighth inning, with Venezuela leading 2-0, Harper launched a 432-foot game-tying home run to dead center field off reliever Andres Machado. To say the least, it was the kind of feat that made it seem like The USA was poised for a comback.

Alas, half an inning later, Eugenio Suárez laced a go-ahead RBI double that proved to be the decisive blow. Harper's homer became the ultimate could-have-been — a stroke of greatness, as ESPN's Jeff Passan wrote, "that simply wasn't surrounded by enough of it from his teammates." The USA finished with just three hits on the night, and aside from Harper, never advanced a runner past first base.

The real hero of Venezuela's championship run was Eduardo Rodriguez, who delivered 4⅓ scoreless innings in the final after manager Omar López spent Tuesday morning on the phone negotiating with three major league organizations for permission to use their relievers on back-to-back days. Rodriguez, coming off a 5.02 ERA last season, shut down one of the most star-studded lineups ever assembled and gave Venezuela's battered bullpen the rest it desperately needed.