Major League Baseball and the Major League Baseball Players Association jointly announced that the “World Baseball Classic,” a 16-nation tournament featuring the world’s best players competing for their home countries, will be played 3-20 March 2006, spring training time. The event has generated much interest with the small island-nation of the Dominican Republic appearing to be the biggest challenge to the contenders from the United States, where baseball was invented. Baseball is played in 110 countries around the world.
Major League Baseball officials have been planning a formal launch announcement of the World Baseball Classic for 11 July , the day before the All-Star Game in Detroit.
The tournament will be the first full-scale event involving Major League Baseball players representing their home countries. While baseball is an Olympic sport, because the scheduling clashes with the MLB schedule, the best players never participate and the DR has never won a medal in the event. A MLB subsidiary called World Baseball Classic Inc. has the rights to the event.
The scheduling so far places the teams into four first round groups:
Japan, Korea, Taiwan and China; Puerto Rico, Cuba, Panama, Italy; United States, Canada, Mexico, South Africa; Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Australia, Netherlands.
The four winners of those pools would each advance to a single-game semifinal on 18 March, at a Major League stadium in the US. The winners of those games will meet for a winner-take-all final 20 March ? a Monday, presumably to avoid television conflicts with the NCAA men’s basketball tournament.
http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=2057633