Trout: Anything short of WBC title would be ‘a failure’ for Team USA
LOS ANGELES — Mike Trout’s beloved Philadelphia Eagles play Saturday. He’ll be in attendance.
“I’m going to be up there screaming,” he said.
The Super Bowl takes place next month, and the Eagles could be there. The World Baseball Classic takes place the following month, and Trout will be there.
The Angels’ star center fielder is the captain of Team USA. The Eagles, like Team USA, have a home-field advantage. And, as Trout noted, each is a top seed.
For the first time in his 13-year career, Trout is participating in baseball’s foremost international tournament — not for goodwill, not for bonding with other players, not for growing the game.
“The whole reason I signed up: trying to win this thing,” Trout said. “There is nothing else.
“Anything else is a failure.”
Team USA is the defending WBC champion, winning in 2017 after Japan won the first two editions of the tournament and the Dominican Republic won the third. Trout, who declined to play after his 2012 American League rookie-of-the-year season and 2016 AL MVP season, said he watched the 2017 games and appreciated the atmosphere and intensity of the tournament.
“That’s what I regretted,” he said. “I should have been out there.”
As captain, he recruited some players, and others reached out to him. The first player he recruited, Trout said: Bryce Harper, with whom he has been compared since they each won rookie-of-the-year awards in 2012.
When Harper signed with the Philadelphia Phillies, he vowed to recruit Trout, who instead signed a contract extension with the Angels.
“Look, this is a chance we get to play together,” Trout said he told Harper, “and I think it would be a pretty cool moment.”
Harper is out after elbow surgery, but the USA roster still features such stars as Mookie Betts, Clayton Kershaw and Will Smith from the Dodgers, plus the likes of Nolan Arenado, Paul Goldschmidt and Trea Turner.
Once the WBC concludes, Trout will return to the Angels, in search of the first postseason victory of Trout’s career. No major league team has gone longer without a playoff appearance than the Angels, who last played in the postseason in 2014.