The Baseball World Cup is an international tournament in which national baseball teams from around the world compete. It is sanctioned by the International Baseball Federation.
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, cricket 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.
The XXXVII International Baseball Federation Baseball World Cup will be held in Taiwan from November 6 through November 18, 2007. Four stadiums will host the tournament. Taichung Intercontinental Baseball Stadium and Taichung Baseball Field in Taichung City, Tianmu Baseball Stadium in Taipei City and Sinjhuang City will all play host to the tournament. Sixteen teams are scheduled to participate, though as of this time, Venezuela’s participation is currently in question due to possible sanctions to be considered by the International Baseball Federation in the wake of their refusal to grant visas to a youth team from Taichung to participate in the Youth World Baseball championships in August, 2007.[1] China was originally scheduled to participate in Pool B, but has dropped out and has been replaced by Thailand, who placed fifth behind China at the Asian Games behind China.
BaseBall in Olympics:
Baseball at the Summer Olympics had its unofficial debut at the 1904 Summer Olympics and has been contested in 12 Olympiads (including its centennial in 2004 Athens). Since then, 17 different nations have appeared in Olympic baseball competition, with 3 of those nations, Cuba, Italy and Japan, appearing in all 4 medal editions of the tournament. Baseball has a long history as an exhibition/demonstration sport in the Olympics. However, for 1992 Barcelona the International Olympic Committee (IOC) granted the sport medal status. Olympic baseball is governed by the International Baseball Federation (IBAF).
At the IOC meeting in July 2005, baseball and softball were voted out of the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, England, becoming the first sport voted out of the Olympics since Polo was eliminated in the 1936 Olympics hosted in Berlin, Germany. The event remains on the docket for the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. The elimination will excise 16 teams and more than 300 athletes from the 2012 Olympics. The two slots left available by the IOC's elimination were not filled by new sports, so both baseball and softball can reemerge as events in the 2016 Olympics, provided no new sports are adopted into the games and both receive enough votes to be included.
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