The World Baseball Challenge was founded in Grand Forks, British Columbia, Canada, in 2002, by Larry Seminoff, who is also the founder of the Grand Forks International Baseball Tournament.
The 2002 World Baseball Challenge included 12 teams. The Cuban National Team, led by starting pitcher Jose Contreras and shortstop Eduardo Paret, beat the Seattle Studs in the final. Other entries included USA, Taiwan, Italy, Russia, Canada, Houston Astros, Chicago Prairie Gravel, Prince George Axemen, and Samoa.
The event, which will take place every two years, starting in 2009, in Prince George, British Columbia, Canada, is sanctioned by the International Baseball Federation, Baseball Canada and Baseball B.C. All games in the 2009 tournament were played at Prince George Citizen Field.
Famous quotes containing the words world, baseball and/or challenge:
“Topographically the country is magnificent—and terrifying. Why terrifying? Because nowhere else in the world is the divorce between man and nature so complete. Nowhere have I encountered such a dull, monotonous fabric of life as here in America. Here boredom reaches its peak.”
—Henry Miller (1891–1980)
“Baseball is the religion that worships the obvious and gives thanks that things are exactly as they seem. Instead of celebrating mysteries, baseball rejoices in the absence of mysteries and trusts that, if we watch what is laid before our eyes, down to the last detail, we will cultivate the gift of seeing things as they really are.”
—Thomas Boswell, U.S. sports journalist. “The Church of Baseball,” Baseball: An Illustrated History, ed. Geoffrey C. Ward, Knopf (1994)
“She might have been old once and now, miraculously, young again—but with the memory of that other life intact. She seemed to know the world down there in the dark hall and beyond for what it was. Yet knowing, she still longed to leave this safe, sunlit place at the top of the house for the challenge there.”
—Paule Marshall (b. 1929)