World Baseball Classic

The World Baseball Classic (WBC), also referred to as the Classic, is an international baseball tournament sanctioned by the World Baseball Softball Confederation (WBSC), the sport's global governing body, and organized by World Baseball Classic Inc., a partnership of the WBSC with Major League Baseball (MLB) and Major League Baseball Players Association (MLBPA). The winning team is awarded the World Baseball Classic Championship Trophy. It is one of the two main senior baseball tournaments sanctioned by the WBSC, alongside the WBSC Premier12, but is the only one to grant the winner the title of "world champion".

The tournament, proposed in 2005 by MLB and its Players Association, was first held in 2006 as an invitational event. It previously coexisted with Olympic baseball (until 2008) and the Baseball World Cup (until 2011) as tournaments sanctioned by the International Baseball Federation, the predecessor to the WBSC. The Baseball World Cup was discontinued after the 2011 edition, when the WBSC accepted an MLB suggestion to make the WBC the officially-sanctioned world championship, on the condition that the Classic should have direct qualifications and follow international anti-doping rules.

After a three-year gap between the first two installments of the tournament, plans were made for the WBC to be repeated every four years following the 2009 event. The third installment of the Classic was held in 2013, and the fourth was held in 2017. The WBC has been held five times from 2006 to 2023, with Japan, the Dominican Republic, and the United States winning the championship. Japan is the only team to win the tournament multiple times, with back-to-back wins in 2006 and 2009 and a third win at the 2023 tournament.

The tournament is the first of its kind to have national teams featuring professional players from the top-level major leagues around the world, including MLB and Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB). In addition to providing a format for the best baseball players in the world to compete against one another while representing their home countries, the WBC was created in order to further promote the game around the globe. The 2023 WBC was one of the most viewed sporting events in the world.

Background

Prior to the advent of the WBC, there was no international baseball championship of national teams that saw universal participation from players across the globe. Outside the United States, the formally-recognized "world championship" was the Baseball World Cup, sanctioned by the International Baseball Federation (IBAF) and held 38 times from 1938 to 2011; it was known as the Amateur World Series until 1988. The inaugural 1938 Amateur World Series was contested by Great Britain and the United States over a series of five games from August 13 to 20 in England, and was won by Great Britain. Cuba was by far the most successful team at the Baseball World Cup, winning 25 of the 39 editions.

Baseball was also intermittently played at the Summer Olympic Games as early as 1912, although it was not recognized as an official demonstration sport until the 1984 Los Angeles Games. It would take another eight years, at the 1992 Games, for baseball to be accorded the status of a medal sport. In 2012 it was once again dropped from the Olympic program, appearing as an optional event in 2020.

For most of their history, the Olympics and Baseball World Cup were open only to amateur (i.e. non-professional) players; as a results, those participating in top-level professional baseball leagues in the United States, Japan, and elsewhere were not included. Although both competition formally rescinded their amateur-only status in the 1990s, allowing professional players to participate, there was little participation from major league players. Nevertheless, the idea of a tournament with the express involvement of top-level professional ballplayers had been seriously considered since the mid-1990s. Gene Orza, counsel and board member of the Major League Baseball Players Association (MLBPA), began campaigning for such a tournament in 2004, enlisting the support of IBAF president Aldo Notari. The inaugural tournament was announced by MLB commissioner Bud Selig and MLBPA president Donald Fehr on May 11, 2005. The success of the 2006 tournament led organizers to immediately begin planning for a follow-up tournament in 2009.

The IBAF merged with the International Softball Federation in 2013 to form the World Baseball Softball Confederation (WBSC). That same year, the WBSC discontinued the Baseball World Cup, last held in 2011, making the World Baseball Classic one of the two main senior baseball tournaments sanctioned by the WBSC, alongside the WBSC Premier12.

Status

The WBC is often compared to the WBSC Premier12 as they are the only two senior international baseball tournaments. However, the WBC is the only one which grants to the winner the title of "World Champion".

Alongside the WBSC recognition, another reason WBC is also considered larger is that active players in MLB, the highest level baseball league in the world, do not participate in the Premier12. This renders the Premier12 less significant among some baseball fans while elevating the WBC, even often referring to it as "The World Cup of Baseball" and comparing the tournament with the FIFA World Cup.

Despite this, controversially, the WBSC World Rankings award higher points for winning the WBSC Premier12 than winning the WBC.

History

The first World Baseball Classic tournament was announced in May 2005 by Bud Selig, the commissioner of Major League Baseball. MLB had been attempting to create such a tournament for at least two years, but faced resistance from both owners and the MLBPA. MLB owners, notably New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner, had been concerned about their star players being injured in international play before the beginning of spring training and the regular season. This was a concern for the MLBPA as well, but their primary objection was with drug testing. MLB wanted the stricter Olympic standards in place for the tournament, while the union wanted the more lax MLB standards in place at the time. Eventually, a deal was reached on insurance for player contracts and a fairly tough drug testing standard. MLB teams would not be able to directly block their players from participating.

Similarly, Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB) and its players' association had a disagreement over participation in the tournament. While the owners initially agreed to the invitation, the players' union was concerned about the time of year the tournament was scheduled to take place, as well as their right to be better represented for the 2009 tournament. On September 16, 2005, after four months of negotiations, NPB officially notified the IBAF and MLB they had accepted the invitation.

2006–09: Samurai Japan's back-to-back championships

The 16-team field for the inaugural 2006 tournament was pre-selected, featuring the countries judged to be the "best baseball-playing nations" in the world; no qualifying competition was held. The tournament format featured round-robin group play in the first and second rounds, followed by single-elimination semifinals and finals. The first game in WBC history saw South Korea defeat Chinese Taipei 2–0 before a crowd of 5,193 at the Tokyo Dome on March 3, 2006. South Korea went on to advance to the semifinals with a 6–0 record but lost to Japan (a team South Korea had beaten twice in the earlier rounds) for a berth in the final game. Meanwhile, Cuba defeated the Dominican Republic in the other semifinal. 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.

The team with the higher winning percentage of games in the tournament was 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 using a gyroball pitching style. Offensively, Japan scord 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, using 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 MLB, from Cuba's increase in defection to Matsuzaka's impact for the World Series champion Boston Red Sox in the next year.