WORLD BASEBALL CLASSIC: POOL C - COLOMBIA VS GREAT BRITAIN

March 13, 2023

Drew Spencer

Chase Field

Team Great Britain

Postgame Press Conference

Great Britain - 7, Colombia - 5

Q. You said before the game, you didn't think this team played their best baseball yet. How did you manage to get it done?

DREW SPENCER: We'll start with the second question and go back to the first.

It felt tremendous. I think we felt like what we hadn't yet done was showed everybody what we're capable of. Like you saw pieces of it. And then it finally came together today. And the feeling is just absolute elation. It's a wonderful feeling.

I've done a lot of tournaments. You take a lot of teams sometimes and the first couple games don't go your way. That's one of those splits in the road, one of those crossroads. You either head down or you stay focused and you head back up.

I'm just so proud of these guys and the way they were able to bounce back from that and tome come through and push through to get the W today.

Q. The win qualifies you for the next tournament, right? Am I correct on that?

DREW SPENCER: As I understand it, we need to not finish at the bottom of the group. So that's not a guarantee. I think we have to see how the rest of this plays out. But either way I think it puts us in a position to be very happy for the next three years.

Q. What are we looking at now that you kind of really boggled up the whole group with this win. Not anything negative about that, but you've got one team 1-0, couple teams 1-1, you're 1-2. You saw what happened in group A, Pool A. You're very much alive to survive this thing?

DREW SPENCER: Absolutely. What it means is we still need to plan on going to Miami, just in case.

Q. In a competition like this, there's so many people outside of Great Britain who have no idea what this means. What does this win mean to the program, to baseball, and Great Britain?

DREW SPENCER: So I'll tell you what, when I first got the job, one of my first opportunities to talk to the British baseball community, I talked about the fact that when you manage a national team or when you run a national team program, you're playing an infinite game. A baseball game is finite. It has a start and a stop. There's a certain number of outs. And somebody wins in the end.

But when you're managing a national team, you're not playing for one game or one season, you're playing for generations. So what this means -- and I said this the other day in this room -- that when you get to the qualifier, when we got to Regensburg and qualified on our third attempt, it felt like the end of chapter one.

This is the beginning of chapter two for Great Britain baseball and British baseball in general. And I think there will be people who can use this moment as inspiration to come out and play the game and to believe that someone with this name on the front of their chest can be successful, not only in competitions like this, but they can achieve all their aspirations.

It's possible to go and play college baseball. It's possible to go play in international leagues, to play in the best professional leagues around the country. And soon we'll see somebody in the Major Leagues because of this moment, in my opinion.

Q. What message did you impart to Gibaut when you went out in the ninth?

DREW SPENCER: It was a quick question. A, do you want -- how are you feeling? And you already know what any competitor's going to say in that moment, right? It's almost a bit of a rhetorical question. But it was just to settle him and give him a chance to understand the significance of the moment in front of him and then to ask him if he wanted to deliver. And he did want it and he delivered.

Q. What remarks have you prepared when either the prime minister or the king calls later today (laughter)?

DREW SPENCER: Well, thank you, your majesty, but we've got one more game to win.

Q. You talked about playing for future generations. Do you think that this team maybe was feeling that pressure a little too much in the first two games, or do you think they just learned how to thrive under that pressure?

DREW SPENCER: It's a really hard thing for me to say, these guys are feeling pressure. I know they do, athletes do, I did when I played. But they keep it so loose and they're so positive and they're such good teammates that even in our worst moments this team has picked each other up.

It's hard for me to pinpoint. I think sometimes just the execution is not there, and it wasn't. But what competitors do is when they don't execute they bounce back. They showed you guys what they're capable of today when it comes to bouncing back from a bad performance.

Q. Chavez Young has been a bit of a catalyst for you. He comes up with the game-tying hit there. And Jaden Rudd has had nice moments, with the go-ahead run there. And talk about their contributions and some of the energy they're bringing to you guys.

DREW SPENCER: Chavez Young is an absolute leader. You saw it. I think the whole of the right side of that stadium is in the Chavez Young fan club just because of the way he plays and his energy and the way he engages everyone around him. He's absolutely been the spark plug.

It was the right move to move him to the lead-off spot after the U.S. game. I think that's the difference-maker for this team. That's huge.

And Jaden, that kid can absolutely play. He already hit the most important home run in British baseball history, or what we thought was, until today. Now there's a couple more. You start looking at it this week and go, maybe there's something that competes with that moment.

But my favorite part about Jaden Rudd, he's the kind of guy, like, a true pro. He knows how to let you know when he'd like you to have confidence in him. He said to me, just before that at-bat: You know I can hit lefties, Coach. You know I can?

And I said, I know, and you're going to get the opportunity to. So he took it. And I'm really proud of him.