Portal:Baseball/Selected article/December, 2007
The World Baseball Classic (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.
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