The World Baseball Classic, sometimes abbreviated WBC, is an international baseball tournament, first held in March 2006. It is sanctioned by the International Baseball Federation and created by Major League Baseball, the Major League Baseball Players Association, and other professional baseball leagues and their players associations around the world. The second WBC is scheduled to take place in 2009, with subsequent tournaments held every four years thereafter.

The WBC is the first international baseball tournament for national teams to feature professional players from the major-leagues; the Summer Olympics have regularly featured college and minor-league players because the Games conflict with the major league season, and the Baseball World Cup historically has not had 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.


There have been 36 Baseball World Cups to date; the first tournament, held in 1938, featured only two teams but the last five have all featured 16 teams. The most recent World Cup was held in 2005 in the Netherlands. The tournament generally receives relatively little publicity, and does not begin to approach the popularity of the football (soccer) World Cup or rugby World Cup. Until 1996 the competition was limited to amateur players. Since 1996, professional minor league players have competed, but Major League Baseball has not allowed its players to participate. In the months leading up to the high-profile first World Baseball Classic, many commentators heralded it as a "Baseball World Cup", perhaps not realizing that a tournament by that name already exists and has for almost seventy years. However, the World Baseball Classic was the first international baseball tournament to include players from the major leagues, making it a closer equivalent to the other world cups, which include players from the most prestigious professional leagues, than the Baseball World Cup.