{"id":602957,"date":"2026-03-03T04:58:33","date_gmt":"2026-03-03T04:58:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/602957\/"},"modified":"2026-03-03T04:58:33","modified_gmt":"2026-03-03T04:58:33","slug":"cody-bellinger-on-why-its-not-the-right-time-to-don-team-usa-uniform","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/602957\/","title":{"rendered":"Cody Bellinger on why it&#8217;s &#8216;not the right time&#8217; to don Team USA uniform"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>TAMPA \u2014 If it were up to Mark DeRosa, Cody Bellinger might have been the fifth Yankee on Team USA in the World Baseball Classic this month.<\/p>\n<p>Alas, DeRosa, the USA manager, recently said on \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2026\/02\/17\/sports\/mark-derosa-reveals-how-he-landed-aaron-judge-for-wbc\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">The Show with Joel Sherman and Jon Heyman<\/a>\u201d that he was \u201cdevastated\u201d when Bellinger decided not to participate.<\/p>\n<p>The Yankees outfielder and first baseman, who was a free agent for much of the offseason before re-signing in late January on a five-year, $162.5 million contract, indicated that the timing was just not right for him to suit up for USA.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI would have loved it,\u201d Bellinger said. \u201cI\u2019ve never repped USA on my jersey, even in high school. So it\u2019s definitely something I really want to do at some point in my life. I think just where I\u2019m at, I thought it was not the right time for it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TAMPA \u2014 If it were up to Mark DeRosa, Cody Bellinger might have been the fifth Yankee on&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":602958,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2376],"tags":[5,1365,4,1690,62,2548,2547,185,428,151,4820,142],"class_list":{"0":"post-602957","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york-yankees","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-cody-bellinger","10":"tag-mlb","11":"tag-new-york","12":"tag-new-york-yankees","13":"tag-newyork","14":"tag-newyorkyankees","15":"tag-sports","16":"tag-sports-plus","17":"tag-spring-training","18":"tag-world-baseball-classic","19":"tag-yankees"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116163477826937854","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/602957","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=602957"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/602957\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/602958"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=602957"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=602957"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=602957"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}