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W.B.C. Championship Will Be a Study in Contrasts

Related Topics: Baseball, Los Angeles

LOS ANGELES — This World Baseball Classic has taken the languid pastime of springtime baseball and turned it into something else, as if the game were being viewed through a fun house mirror.

It has had outrageous defense, audacious celebrations, cacophonous crowds, a run on blond hair dye and — it would be remiss not to mention — a mensch on a bench.

Then, on a damp and drizzly Tuesday night conjured out of a Raymond Chandler novel, it offered another rarity: the United States reaching the championship game for the first time.

Even that had a twist.