The FIFA World Cup is about to enter the quarterfinals as I write this. It has been a tournament of upsets, heroics, tragedies and the usual that you see in a World Cup. There have also been controversies of course. As baseball's version of the World Cup approaches, a similar sense of excitement begins to build among baseball fans. A question also comes to mind. How can the World Baseball Classic become the mega event that the World Cup became over the years? Some of what is required is simply time. It takes time for events to gain importance and prestige. The first World Cups were fairly minor events in comparison to today. Other things, however, can be controlled by the powers that be and can serve to further expand the prestige of the World Baseball Classic.
The first thing I would like to see is one definitive host country for each edition. Part of what makes a World Cup magical is the idea of the world converging on one country. For whosoever happens to be the host, this is a unique opportunity to welcome the world and create a unique buzz that will be remembered for decades to come. There are several countries more than capable of holding such an event in baseball. If we do remain with the current format though I would suggest giving more countries the opportunity to host. I would like to see baseball hotbeds like the Dominican Republic or Mexico or even my native Canada get to host a group more often. I believe it would also be healthy for the game to have emerging baseball countries like Australia, Italy or the Czech Republic get a chance like this in the future as their baseball infrastructure develops.
Another suggestion would be to expand qualifiers next time. Note, this does not mean expanding the number of qualified teams necessarily. We can and probably should stick with 20 countries or 24 at most. What I propose though is that more countries get to at least attempt qualifying to avoid fiascos like the one between Argentina and the Philippines in this cycle. Both teams should have had at least the chance to qualify. Yes, there would be some national baseball programs that would be shown to be far from ready to be in a WBC but we have this in soccer too and yet every nation in the world gets at least the chance to qualify. I would like this to be true of baseball also. At minimum, I would like enough countries to throw their hats in the ring such that we can have qualifiers for every continent as they do for the World Cup.
On that subject, I think we need to do a better job promoting the qualifier events. The amount of empty seats this time around was unacceptable and a lot of it has to do with less than stellar marketing. Timing is another issue I suspect. This time around qualifiers coincided with the MLB stretch run as they have in the past. This drowns out the qualifiers and precludes any major leaguers who could attract better attendance at these events from trying to help their countries qualify. Qualifiers should move from September. November perhaps works best.
Another proposal from me is that there should be fewer countries automatically qualified for the 2027 edition. I propose the following instead. Teams that emerge from the four groups into the second group round should have automatic berths and even third place finishes in each group. Fourth and fifth place teams in each group should have to earn the right to return to the WBC. Maybe you could even say third place teams should have to and I accept this proposal also. Part of what makes World Cup qualifying interesting is that some of the countries expected to qualify fail to do so and some not expected to earn a spot do so. We got a bit of that this time around with Team GB and the Czechs getting in so this is a step in the right direction.
Finally, I believe that more should be done as far as growing the game in countries where the sport is still relatively new. The whole point of the WBC was to make baseball a truly global game and part of this is going to be ramping up efforts to ensure that talent in countries where baseball is still developing does not get truncated for lack of equipment or know-how. There is a lot of good work being done here already but more can always be done.
The 2023 WBC will be a watershed moment in the history of our game. It is the first post-pandemic WBC and it has expanded. It also promises to feature far more of the game's stars than previous editions. Furthermore, there are juicy storylines to follow from the potential American and Dominican dream teams to the push by Japan to reconquer the world and Korea's attempt at redemption after disappointment in 2013 and 2017. And who will go on a Team Israel style Cinderella run in 2023. Will they do it again? Oh, and the group of death. Who gets out of that group in Miami? This tournament has the potential to make the WBC a true institution in our game. That in mind, it is critical that we make the most of it and its aftermath.
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