The Growing Popularity of the World Baseball Classic Despite Injury Risks

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We will watch Shohei Ohtani striking out Mike Trout, Trea Turner hitting a grand slam in the 8th inning to put Japan ahead, Japan winning a game with a walk-off, and Mexico making an amazing comeback against Puerto Rico again and again. We will also talk about Edwin Díaz being injured for the seasonand Jose Altuve’s broken finger all year long.

This year’s World Baseball Classic created some wonderful memories – 47 games over two weeks. This tournament showed how amazing the Japanese team is, and how talented Shohei Ohtani is at what he does. Furthermore, it also expanded worldwide awareness of baseball!

Ever since its beginnings in 2006, this event had grown and gotten more popular around the world. Although it’s not as well-known as the Soccer World Cup, its impact has increased every year.

Kyle Schwarber said that baseball was like the Olympics for them because they can’t actually play in the Olympics. On Tuesday night, Japan defeated the US team 3-2 and this win was their first title since 2009. Baseball is not included as an Olympic sport anymore, but Japan won gold against a US team of minor league players when it was still at the Olympics.

The World Baseball Classic (WBC) was held in different cities such as Miami, Phoenix, Tokyo and Taiwan. It made between $90 million and $100 million in revenue for Major League Baseball according to the stats. A record-breaking 1,306,414 people attended the tournament which is 20% higher than 2017 with 1,086,720 people.

In addition, this year’s semifinals were on FS1 and Fox Deportes bringing 2.4 million viewers watching it, an increase of 96% from 2017 where MLB Network and ESPN Deportes broadcasted it.

“Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred said it was really important for Fox to broadcast the games. Even though he loves MLB Network, having a big broadcaster wanting the event is a huge deal.”

Since the start of the World Baseball Classic, teams have been worried about the players’ safety. Some even refused to let their pitchers join for fear of them getting injured and not being able to play in the regular baseball season. Recent injuries sustained by Díaz and Altuve just made these worries become stronger. But it looks like people will keep signing up to represent their countries, as MLB makes money from this tournament plus lots of people all over the world are interested in it.

Francisco Lindor, who is part of Team Puerto Rico and the New York Mets with Díaz, said that everybody cares for each other. He continued by saying nobody wants to get hurt but they all consider it a huge honor to be representing their countries. Furthermore, Francisco mentioned that this experience also allows us to learn from others which he described as being “amazing”.

In Japan, people were so excited to watch the WBC games that these three matches became the most popular ones. These were a match against Italy which got 48.7% of households watching, 42.5% watched when they played South Korea and 44.4% tuned in when they played Mexico. The figures given here mean how many homes watched the games on TV.

When the Japanese team won, everyone in Japan was so happy that they threw a big party. Yomiuri, the biggest newspaper in Japan, printed an extra Wednesday edition which is usually only done when there is something really important happening – like last year when Shinzo Abe (the former leader of Japan) died. On top of the paper was written “Japan, The World’s No. 1”.

Mexico is really excited because they got to the last 4 in a sport competition and this might make more people interested in sports other than soccer. The manager Benji Gil said these two weeks will draw the attention of both young Mexicans and adults living abroad. Recently, 3 new countries competed for the first time like Britain, Czech Republic, Nicaragua though none of them made it past the group stage.

China and Israel had games that were stopped early because other teams were losing too much. Britain and Canada also had a game end this way once each.

Group A was really challenging and all the five countries ended with 2-2 marks. Cuba and Italy moved forward compared to Netherlands, Taiwan, and Panama thanks to some math calculations which looked at how many runs allowed versus outs happened in the games.

U.S. Manager Mark DeRosa said that a lot of countries are getting better in baseball and he was amazed at how good Colombia’s pitchers were, even if they weren’t very famous. One pitcher from Nicaragua named Duque Hebbert did so well that he got a professional contract to play with the Detroit Tigers after striking out three All-Stars.

MLB and the players’ association have made a plan for the upcoming World Baseball Classic (WBC) to be held in March 2026. MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred said that it is still too early to know if any changes will be applied to the tournament format.

He believes that a mix of sport and national pride can create an exciting experience, where everyone should take part.