by International Baseball Federation, www.ibaf.org
Dallas (Texas-USA) – The Qualifiers to the 2013 World Baseball Classic, to be held in March 2013, will see 16 teams participate. The teams will be divided into 4 groups. Each one of the groups will qualify (through a double elimination format) 1 to the third World Baseball Classic, the first that will award the winners as the World Champions.
The 16 teams participating to the qualifier are: Brazil, Canada, Chinese Taipei, Colombia, Czech Republic, France, Great Britain, Germany, Israel, Nicaragua, New Zealand, Panama, Philippines, South Africa, Spain, Thailand.
The hosts of the 4 groups will be determined in January and the qualifier will be played in a date yet to be determined in the Fall of 2012.
The update on the tournament was introduced to the delegates of the IBAF XXVI Congress by MLB Senior Vice President International Business Operations Paul Archey.
“Tonight is going to be informal” said Archey, but he actually expressed a lot of pride for the accomplishments of the 2 editions of the tournament. To mention just one, the fact that $ 13 million where distributed to the IBAF and the participating Federations for development.
Archey talked about the future of the tournament and the hope that it will help showcase the best players: “To do this, we may need to make the tournament shorter”.
Archey said that the 2013 Classic may be involving more international venues and that the ultimate goal is to have a tournament that gives a chance to every country to participate through a qualification system.