It would be hilarious if they lose to, oh I don't know, maybe Vietnam?

The baseball universe needs to see USA v The Dominican Republic. Don’t over look this tournament folks! If you’ve played sports I am sure you’ve dreamed of representing your country in a tournament. I think these players are going to bring it!

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Sick bro, what year is it?

you know baseball trying to be “hip and cool” with the kids.

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"In Japan, where 34.6% of households watched a World Cup game with Croatia last year, the WBC can be an even bigger draw than the global soccer event."

"Can" is doing a lot of heavy lifting there.

Maybe the writer is from the UK, still very much in use here

For those who don’t know much about baseball the heavy favorites are: Dominican rep, USA and Japan. The teams who could potentially win are: Puerto Rico, Venezuela, Korea, Cuba, Kingdom of the Netherlands, Mexico

I mean baseball is absolutely massive in Japan. Shohei Ohtani, Samurai Japan’s headliner, is the biggest celebrity in the entire country, and he’s playing with some other massive names in Japanese baseball.

I don’t think it’s hyperbole to think that this WBC might do better than the World Cup, at least in Japan.

I do not care.

Ohtani hit 2 3-run home runs in the opener.

Japan is to be feared solely because of him… let alone the rest of the Japanese badasses

Ok edge boy

Japan hasn't played their first game yet though

It was against a fairly new NPB arm though, likely not on the same level as those he’ll be facing.

Looking forward to going to the United States games this weekend in Phoenix.

I mean MLB is the one that basically created and pushed for this tournament, originally through the IBAF, in order to grow the sport internationally after it was removed as an Olympic sport. Of course they have control over it. And honestly March is a good compromise. I'd rather have something like this in Spring Training than not at all. And while it's a cool tournament I'd rather not have MLB games be shut down for a month in the summer time. No way the owners would ever allow their players to leave in the middle of the season. Nor would they ever give up the middle summer months when MLB is the only big 3 sport on TV for about 2 months.

I get where you're coming from on the suggestion, but I'm just glad it exists at all.

MLB, NPB, KBO, Mexican Baseball League, and most other major league seasons run March/April to Sept/Oct. Right now is spring training for everyone and the perfect time for the tournament.

Easily will surpass the World Cup. Every day on tv here in Japan you can’t miss them talking about Ohtani and WBC. I would say well over 50% will watch the games.

Back in 2017, 25.4% of all households in Japan tuned into just the first round games (albeit that's the only info I could find in like 2 mins of googling). Now Japan has Ohtani playing for them again, and his stardom has only grown after he dominated MLB in '21 and '22.

If they make the finals, I could see viewership in Japan being even higher than the world cup. Afterall they have their Koshien tournament, which is a high school baseball tournament, that is basically as big as March Madness is in the states.

The teams who have first round byes usually do some exhibition matches against local teams for practice and marketing purposes. For example, Team USA will scrimmage against the San Francisco Giants and Team Canada against the Chicago Cubs.

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I'm flying tea AZ and going to the game on the 15th

They don't play series.

Oh was it a warm up? I thought it was the first game. My bad…

Enjoy! Hopefully a weather upgrade for you as well, looking like mid 70's to lower 80's if trend holds up. Sundays game against Mexico is sold out soon almost 50,000 fans! Should be a fun tournament.

I'm coming from SF so I'm used to baseball in cold weather. But I heard it had been especially chilly there recently. I'm going to try to catch the Mexico game that day too, I fly in that morning so without delays should land just in time to book it to the game.

That is just so cool.

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Weird take. If anything “can” is an understatement, baseball is substantially more popular in Japan than soccer and their WBC games will likely eclipse those numbers. Especially if they advance further into the tournament but quite possibly the early games too.

The Koshien baseball tournament attracts millions and millions of viewers in Japan, it’s basically their March Madness and Super Bowl rolled into one event.

That’s a yearly high school tournament; this a national team event that hasn’t happened in six years and for the first time features the best Japanese player the sport has ever seen.

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Nah. Great Britain sweeps the tournament and replaces soccer with baseball as the national sport

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Dunno everyone knows the Dutch are big ball players

I mean they lost to the brewers 8-2

I think he meant big ball players referring to their height, as in they are very tall- given that they're dutch.

They can’t beat the USA in soccer, might as well try baseball.

They dont have a bye. They have to go through the same pool play as everyone else. The games hosted in asia start a few days earlier to give those teams that advance extra time to travel for the knockout stage in the us.

So cool to have othani to root for

I thought there was a play-in round to get the last slot of each Pool. Maybe I misunderstood that bit of the structure.

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Tbf using cricket bats instead of baseball bats is a pretty big advantage.

Imma let you finish but the sickest tournament ever surely was in 2020

Ahh, i see. There is but those qualifiers already occurred and arent part of the formal tournament.

It was, yeah. 70’s all week into 80’s next week. Should be fair weather baseball.

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It did, 47%

Amazing to see the Celzechs get a win! This tourney has been great so far.

41.6% of Japanese households watched their first World Baseball Classic game. So swap out "can be" in that original statement for "is"

46%. Eek