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:
“It is too late—the world is too dark for any thought ahead. Others are writing my biography, and let it rest as they elect to make it. I have lived my life, well and ill, always less well than I wanted it to be but it is, as it is, and as it has been; so small a thing, to have had so much about it!”
—Clara Barton (1821–1912)
“Spooky things happen in houses densely occupied by adolescent boys. When I checked out a four-inch dent in the living room ceiling one afternoon, even the kid still holding the baseball bat looked genuinely baffled about how he possibly could have done it.”
—Mary Kay Blakely (20th century)
“The only use of an obstacle is to be overcome. All that an obstacle does with brave men is, not to frighten them, but to challenge them.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)