Before the Major League Baseball season gets started on April 1st, teams spend March playing a month’s worth of spring training games. This March, some added baseball is taking place prior to the MLB season. The World Baseball Classic is currently taking place in various locations around the world.
The World Baseball Classic is an event that is held once every four years. The final, and most publicized round of it put 16 teams from various countries against each other. Japan has won both World Baseball Classics to date, in 2006 and 2009.
A somewhat unique element to the World Baseball Classic is that players from the USA-based MLB mostly play for teams of other countries. Many MLB players come from countries other than the United States and choose to play for their home. This allows players a chance to show pride in their home countries, which is something they may not normally be able to do.
My personal favorite part of the World Baseball Classic is how it shows how well-represented multiple countries are in the MLB. A lot of people wonder why the MLB championship series is called the World Series and why its champion is called the World Champions if they do not play teams from around the world to win it. But the amount of MLB players playing for various countries in the World Baseball classic shows that a variety of countries are represented in the MLB.
In 2008, baseball was played in the Olympics for the final time. The World Baseball Classic is a great replacement of the Olympics for baseball. It is a way for international teams to still compete against each other, while on a stage just for baseball.
Baseball never was a premier Olympic sport and never got much attention in the Olympics. The World Baseball Classic may not be a major sporting event yet, but it does focus on baseball at the international level. It is a good way to showcase the top baseball talents from around the world while giving credit to their true home countries.
The World Baseball Classic also managed to eliminate one of the major flaws of baseball in Olympics. Since the Olympics mostly take place in the summer, the best MLB players could never participate. That left minor league players as the ones to represent countries.
Since the World Baseball Classic is centered around baseball, it is held at a time when MLB players can participate, since the MLB does feature the best baseball talent on the planet. March is the perfect time for MLB players to play in the World Baseball Classic, since it is a time when they would be playing exhibition games anyway.
I obviously am a big fan of the World Baseball Classic. I like how it is an event that centers around just baseball on an international level. However, I do think it has more potential than is being realized at the moment and it can grow. Even in the United States, where baseball is regarded to be larger than in other countries, the World Baseball Classic is not yet a major sporting event.
The World Baseball Classic has only been hosted three times so far and thus us relatively new, but it needs to still put on emphasis on growing. If the event does not become a more major event, it so may go the way of baseball in the Olympics. I hope that the people in charge of the World Baseball Classic will find a way to make this special event something that will last and grow larger with time.