Never mind the World Cup... here's the World Baseball Classic

I don't mean it about the World Cup.

If you thought the idea of spreading the matches of the 2026 World Cup from Vancouver to Mexico City was a bit racy, then the World Baseball Classic, which starts this week, is asking you to hold its beer. Or rum. Or sake.

Depending on which pool you tune in to, or which stage of the knockout rounds catch your attention, you could be watching a broadcast from San Juan, Puerto Rico or Tokyo, Japan - or the MLB stadia of Houston and Miami in the United States.

The WBC is a periodical multi-national tournament that progresses from a group stage to a knockout competition to produce a champion team, but the World Cup of baseball it is not. However, once every three years it is a fascinating addition to the pre-season schedule of MLB and every edition seems to be a bigger and better deal than the previous one.

In its infancy, big league players generally avoided the competition. Japan won its first two editions, in 2006 and 2009, powered by Daisuke Matsuzaka, the MVP of both tournaments. Matsuzaka was pitching domestically in Japan in ‘06 but by ‘09 had moved to Boston and already won a World Series with the Red Sox.

The Dominican Republic is a proud baseball hotbed, producing waves of MLB stars and they tend to show up. The DR won the next edition, in 2013 with a team packed with Major League talent. Four years later, the USA won its only title so far. After COVID, the top US stars answered a call to drive the hype train for a reinvigorated WBC, with Japan’s new generation of stars, led by Shohei Ohtani, on the other side of the draw. The entire tournament came down to a battle between (at the time) the two superstars of the LA Angels: at bat, Mike Trout, three-time American League MVP and the captain of Team USA; on the mound, Ohtani, already an American League MVP and - in case I haven’t made this clear by now - one of the most extraordinary athletes the world has ever seen. Check this shit out.

This year, Team USA is even more loaded, led by Aaron Judge, the New York Yankees’ gargantuan slugger who has won three of the past four AL MVP Awards. Japan, too, are stronger, with more established MLB talent.

But the real fun comes from the dregs in the group stages. And that includes Team GB.

There are a good few ways to be eligible for a national team in this tournament (several players have moved from one to another between iterations). On the entire Team GB roster, two were born in the UK - and both moved to the United States before they were too old to play little league baseball. They are surrounded by lower-ranking MLB players who have a family tie to the UK, or would qualify for a UK passport (they are not required to hold one). Plus one superstar: Jazz Chisholm, a flamboyant, athletic and electric infielder who plays for the Yankees.

Because baseball is so volatile in one-off games, the odds on another heavyweight finish between USA and Japan are not as narrow as you might think. If they do, it’ll be unmissable, high-level stuff.

But if you want a low-stakes introduction to baseball before we get going for real, catch up with one of the group games or adopt a plucky underdog and see how far they can make it.

I once lived for a year in the Atsugi region of the Japanese capital, teaching English to the children of Tokyo, which under WBC rules makes me eligible to support Team Japan, so pass me that cold, silver can of Asahi Super Dry and that classic, white, pin-striped Ohtani jersey.

Gambare!

Or, as they say in MLB…

Let’s fucking go!