The Potential of the World Baseball Classic

I love the World Baseball Classic, let’s get that statement out of the way.



I love all the incredible games we have seen over the years, I love all the surprise-surprise stories that have occurred, and quite frankly the 2009 WBC Final between Japan and Korea remains one of the greatest baseball games in the last 25 years, even if there was minimal press surrounding it. I love all the nations that suddenly have developed a thirst for baseball like Brazil, the Netherlands, and Italy—the latter which have shocked the sports world by being so successful. I love the passion, the atmosphere, the ambiance, and the games themselves.


That being said, The World Baseball Classic is a fantastic idea in need of desperate tweaking. Being one of the most popular sports in the entire planet, it’s rather shocking that they had not tried something to this pedigree before. Being on its third tournament, the interest has remained high in the Caribbean, high in the Netherlands, extremely high in Japan, and just starting to gain some traction in North America.  That being said however, this tournament is far from reaching its full potential, and even farther from ever having a chance to gaining the type of fame of the World Cup.


I’m not saying the Baseball Classic has a chance of eclipsing or matching the World Cup, but it has the opportunity of achieving the world-stops-moving style of mayhem and hype when it rolls around every four years. The World Baseball Classic passes off as a half-assed tournament fueled by pure passion. The opening round doesn’t draw enough interest, some of the rules are a bit much, and the tournament doesn’t cater to its issues of conflicting schedules.


There should be no reason why the Netherlands played Cuba in Japan in front of a crowd that barely scratched 10K.


There should be no reason why the semifinals should be played on a weekday afternoon in a neutral setting.


There should be no reason why we have had sellouts only when Japan plays in Japan and when the Dominican Republic played Puerto Rico.


The goal of the Classic is to make the world stop and focus on primarily one major sport for a good period of time; similar to what the World Cup achieves every four years and what the FIBA World Cup will be attempting to accomplish when it starts its new generation of tournaments in the coming years. The goal of the Classic is to truly be a very big deal, in the larger nations like China and the United States as well as the smaller ones like Venezuela and the Dominican Republic.


To start, this tournament needs to appeal to Major League Baseball, the biggest importer/exporter of baseball players and stars in the entire world. We can start with something small like putting team patches on the sleeves of the players competing, and continue to something big like the scheduling. The WBC interrupts baseball season mildly by getting in the way of Spring Training. This has prompted teams to prevent players from competing, and has prompted other players to resign from the tournament altogether. The FIBA World Cup happens over the late summer, similar to the Olympics where basketball also has competition. The FIFA World Cup also occurs over the summer, and well pretty much all other leagues refuse or dare to stand up to that monolith. Lastly, we have the NHL willing to pause its season to allow its players to compete, which has yielded great results. WBC can learn from these examples.


The best way for the MLB and the WBC to coincide, one of three things have to occur: shorten the length of the season forever and always, shorten the season only in WBC years, or lastly and most considerable move the entire tournament into November. If you shorten the season to a mere 132 games and maybe even start the season a bit earlier, then a tournament in October is definitely possible, or a later start to the season can occur and not have to interrupt the Spring Training. Lastly, with a shortened season, there would be enough room to pause the season for a little to make way to the WBC similar to what occurs in hockey.

With all these options however, most likely the one MLB is most willing to agree on is the November tournament after the World Series. July has also been an optioned tossed around, with the MLB season taking a break. This way the World Baseball Classic becomes the ONLY major sporting even occurring in the time period. But moving the start and finish of the tournament allows us to eliminate the silly rules of the tournament like the mercy rule, pitch count, and extra baserunners in extra innings.To add to that, limiting the season or giving it a more set schedule would allow for actual decent travel time between games. Puerto Rico for example had a game in Miami, and then had to play in San Francisco the very next day---and this is the Semifinals!!!!!


Even cooler would be if the World Series baseball team is willing to compete as a whole and represent the United States. But considering how international the game has become, odds are they would have to fill the roster with players from other teams, eliminating the point of a team like the San Francisco Giants competing in the first place. To me I would prefer a 132-game season and a tournament in October before it gets too cold, and when spots like the Southeast and the Pacific Coast still has bearable weather. And to add to that, MLB season should honestly look into shortening its season in the first place.


As a matter of fact, MLB needs to do a better job expanding its horizon and expand the methods of displaying the games to nations all over the world. Playing these games JUST on the MLB Network and ESPN Deportes just won’t cut it. Look how the NFL succeeds: there are games on the NFL Network, ESPN, Fox, CBS, and even NBC once a week. The World Baseball Classic must, must get along with the powerhouse sports networks like ESPN and to an even lesser extent, Fox Sports. There has to be a cable expansion of some sort. Let it go MLB, it can’t grow if you keep it virtually all to yourself.





This upcoming part is purely me and what my vision for what the World Baseball Classic should look like in the future.




The tournament itself can really benefit from an expanded and more inclusive first round. Instead of making it just a bit past a dozen games overall amongst those involved, it should be a 32-nation tournament with a first round of 12 or 18 games. The divisions will be split into four teams into 8 sections. And instead of neutral ballparks, each team should have 6 or 9 games at home and 6 or 9 games away. Can you imagine seeing the Puerto Rico-Dominican Republic environment all the time? Can you imagine the Netherlands getting home games? Italy getting some home games? Montreal’s infamous baseball stadium getting new life? They just might get some Soccer World Cup love if the baseball team plays in their homeland for a bit. You split the divisions geographically to prevent traveling from being too much of a hassle. North America, Central America, Caribbean, Europe, Asia, South America, Indian Ocean can be example divisions we can use.


The top two teams of each division can move on, which gives us the 16 that we usually start with in the WBC. The top teams can be determined with a mix of best record and best run differential. Where I differ is that the higher seeds can still use home-field advantage and you round-robin it down to 8. Once you lose, your home-field advantage disappears. Now, we should only round-robin any aspect of the competition if it means that the higher seeding can deliver another home game. So there will still be home-field advantage instead of neutral sites. From the Elite 8 down to the Finale, it should be one-game playoffs, no more round-robin.


With the final four teams, they should play in a neutral site—whether in Miami (My personal preference), New York, San Francisco, or Los Angeles. With my format, it allows for the WBC to range to more countries for a longer period of time, before consolidating to a host city in the United States. Hey, for as long as the Americans continue to not truly invest in this tournament—we should keep it away from them as long as possible, while giving nations in all the continents their moment to shine in front of their home country.


Bottom Line: The World Baseball Classic has been a great moment in baseball history, and a great moment in the history of Caribbean Baseball as their brand has become introduced to the rest of the world. That being said, the tournament still needs a few fixes here and there to become truly perfect and universally appealing to the rest of the world. None of these fixes are impossible, but it will require a bit of teamwork from big businesses around the world in order to enhance this product and bring it closer to perfection. My pet peeve is watching good ideas fall apart, and I would absolutely hate for this tournament to stick to neutral in terms of exposure, success, and appeal. Baseball is a beautiful game, and this tournament can spread its beauty across all four corners of the globe—as long as everyone is willing to participate.





I love the World Baseball Classic, and I want to truly see it grow.




And I know I'm not the only one.