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.
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“The future of humanity is uncertain, even in the most prosperous countries, and the quality of life deteriorates; and yet I believe that what is being discovered about the infinitely large and infinitely small is sufficient to absolve this end of the century and millennium. What a very few are acquiring in knowledge of the physical world will perhaps cause this period not to be judged as a pure return of barbarism.”
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“I’ve gradually risen from lower-class background to lower-class foreground.”
—Marvin Cohen, U.S. author and humorist. Baseball the Beautiful, Links Books (1970)
“The abjection of our political situation is the only true challenge today. Only facing up to this situation in all its desperation can help us get out of it.”
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