PHOENIX — Maybe this will help Canada forget about that Olympic hockey debacle.

The Canadians, mostly minor leaguers whose annual salaries probably don't equal one game's pay for Alex Rodriguez, pulled off an inspiring 8-6 victory over Team USA in the World Baseball Classic on Wednesday.

For one day, from Nova Scotia to Vancouver Island, baseball was king.

"We like to tell everyone we can play baseball, too," Adam Stern said. "We're not just a hockey country."

Stern, sidelined by thumb and rotator cuff injuries most of last season with the Boston Red Sox, was the spunky catalyst of the Canadian triumph. He tripled in one run, singled in two more, and raced around the bases for an inside-the-park home run after his hit skidded off the base of a bullpen fence into center field. On top of that, he made two sensational catches in center.

"Stern had the game of his life," said 21-year-old Adam Loewen, the Canadian starter who held the Americans scoreless for 3 2-3 innings and got the victory. Loewen, a left-hander, spent all of last season at Class A Frederick in the Baltimore Orioles organization.

Except for a six-run fifth inning, highlighted by Jason Varitek's 448-foot grand slam, the vaunted U.S. offense was stifled.

"It's a very quiet locker room right now," U.S. manager Buck Martinez said. "I think everybody is feeling like they got kicked in the stomach."

Chase Utley thought he had given the United States the lead in the eighth, flipping his bat and raising both arms in triumph after he hit a long drive to center with two on. But Stern made a leaping catch at the wall near the 407-foot sign to end the inning.

"I thought Chase's ball was gone when he hit it," Derek Jeter said. "I mean, he crushed that ball."

A crowd of 16,993 at Chase Field alternated between booing America's futility and supportive chants of "U-S-A!"