The World Baseball Classic is an international baseball tournament sanctioned by the International Baseball Federation (IBAF) and created by Major League Baseball (MLB), the Major League Baseball Players Association (MLBPA), and other professional baseball leagues and their players associations around the world. It is the main tournament sanctioned by the IBAF, which names its winner the "World Champion." It previously coexisted with Olympic Baseball (until 2008) and the Baseball World Cup (until 2011) as IBAF-sanctioned tournaments, but the other two have been discontinued. The 2009 Classic, the second edition of the event, was won by Japan for the second tournament in a row.
The tournament is the first of its kind to have national baseball teams feature professional players from the major leagues around the world including Major League Baseball; the Summer Olympics had regularly featured college and minor-league players because the Games conflict with the major league seasons in both North America and Asia, and the Baseball World Cup historically did not have major leaguers participate. 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 World Baseball Classic was created in order to further promote the game around the globe.
After a 3-year gap between the first two installments of the tournament, plans call for the World Baseball Classic to be repeated every four years following the 2009 event, with the third installment of the Classic to occur in 2013.
Read more about World Baseball Classic: History, Results, Medal Table, Players in WBC Editions, All-WBC Teams, Eligibility Rules, Rules of Play, Established Process, Field, Overall Standings
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