SAN DIEGO— Forget beisbol. This was yakyu at its best, and the inaugural World Baseball Classic belongs to Japan.
Ichiro Suzuki and his less-famous countrymen beat Cuba 10-6 in the championship game Monday night, ripping a page out of Cuba's scorebook by winning a major international tournament.
On a festive night when Cuban and Japanese fans danced to "Surf City" and Sadaharu Oh escorted Hank Aaron — there's 1,623 homer runs between them — onto the field for the ceremonial first pitch, Japan won the 16-nation tournament that showed baseball in March can matter.
The Classic's slogan is "Baseball Spoken Here." In this case, it's yakyu, which in Japanese means "field ball."
Suzuki doubled, singled and drove in a run. He also scored three times, including in a four-run first inning that proved Cuba's pitchers are vulnerable, after all.
Cuba's fans perked up when their team, wearing its lucky red uniforms, pulled to 6-5 on a two-run homer by Frederich Cepeda with one out in the eighth. Akinori Otsuka, the former San Diego Padres reliever now with Texas, came on and retired the side.
Suzuki singled in the ninth to score Munenori Kawasaki on a close play at the plate and make it 7-5. Kawasaki slid, turned and stuck his right hand just inside of catcher Ariel Pestano's left foot to — perhaps — touch the plate. Japan broke it open on a two-run single by pinch-hitter Kosuke Fukudome and a sacrifice fly by Michihiro Ogasawara.
Otsuka allowed a run in the ninth before closing it out for a save.
With the United States failing to make it out of the second round and the Dominican Republic losing to Cuba in the semifinals, Suzuki, the Seattle Mariners' star, was the only major leaguer in the starting lineups. Otsuka is the only other big leaguer on Japan's roster.
The Cubans consider themselves amateurs, although Miguel Tejada and Albert Pujols, who played for the Dominican Republic, said leading up to the semis that most of the Cubans could be in the majors.
But for as good as the Cubans are — they had won 22 of 24 games in international competition and have dominated the globe for decades — they cracked at the worst possible time.
Japan took a 4-0 lead in the top of the first while hitting the ball out of the infield just once.
Cuba starter Ormari Romero was on a short leash to begin with, but was yanked after throwing 23 pitches. He retired leadoff hitter Kawasaki, then loaded the bases on infield singles by Tsuyoshi Nishioka and Nobuhiko Matsunaka, and a walk to Suzuki.