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| Date | March 20, 2006 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Venue | Petco Park | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| City | San Diego, California, U.S. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| MVP | Daisuke Matsuzaka (Japan) | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Attendance | 42,696 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Time of game | 3:40 p.m. PDT | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Television | Multiple | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Radio | Multiple | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
The 2006 World Baseball Classic championship was the inaugural final of the World Baseball Classic played on March 20, 2006, at Petco Park in San Diego, United States. The best-of-one final was the match to determine the first world champion in baseball. Although this was the first iteration of the World Baseball Classic, both Cuba and Japan were favorites to win the championship, as they were the only countries to have appeared in the top four at every iteration in the Summer Olympics up to this final. Japan won by 4 runs to claim the first championship of the World Baseball Classic.
Both countries had to go through two rounds of group stages and the semi-finals in knockout format to reach the final. Cuba lost only two games, once to Puerto Rico in the first round and once to the Dominican Republic in the second round. However, Japan lost three times, twice to South Korea in each round and the United States in the second round. This sparked a format controversy since South Korea would have a better overall and head-to-head record than Japan by the end of the tournament. As such, Cuba was the favorite to win the final as the team with the higher winning percentage of games in the tournament were to be the home team.
The match began progressing when Japan's starting pitcher–Daisuke Matsuzaka–gave up four hits, five strikeouts and one run by the end of the 4th inning through a gyroball pitching style. Offensively, Japan was able to record 6 runs with the help of Ichiro Suzuki's batting style of contact hitting. Once the Japanese bullpen took the mound in the 6th inning, Cuba aggressively responded for the rest of the baseball game through power hitting. By the end of the eighth, the disparity would come down to one run in favor of Japan from Frederich Cepeda's home run, who would record three runs batted in by the end of the game. In the ninth, Japan would counter by pushing their offensive limit over Cuba's, which would result in a final score of ten to six. The aftermath of the final most notably included notice from Major League Baseball, from Cuba's increase in defection to Matsuzaka's impact for the World Series champion Boston Red Sox in the next year.