World Baseball
Classic qualifying round in Panama to be held from September 30 to October 5
Better late
than never, the premier international baseball tournament is back with
qualifying this month. It’s two years late because of a pandemic, but the World
Baseball Classic is coming back this month after a five-year hiatus.
Source: MLB
The WBC
announced that the first qualifying rounds for the 2023 tournament will start
at Armin-Wolf-Arena in Regensburg, Germany from September 16 to September 21.
Then a second qualifier will take place at the Rod Carew National Stadium in
Panama City, Panama from September 30 to October 5. Twelve national teams,
split evenly between the two sites, will be vying for four tickets to the 2023
World Baseball Classic.
In Panama, New
Zealand will play Brazil and Argentina will be opposed by Pakistan. Panama and
Nicaragua have the two byes in that qualifier. Argentina is competing in WBC
qualifying for the first time.
All 16 teams
that qualified for the 2017 tournament have automatically qualified for next
year’s WBC. A record twenty nations will compete in the 2023 World Baseball
Classic main tournament.
All WBC
qualifying games will be broadcast on MLB.com, at Worldbaseballclassic.com and
on the World Baseball Classic’s Facebook and YouTube pages.
The World
Baseball Softball Confederation, the official world governing body for baseball
and softball, considers the World Baseball Classic to be the official “World
Championship” of baseball. So it should be a big deal.
The WBC is the
most important event for spreading the popularity of baseball worldwide.
It means a lot
to some of these emerging baseball markets to even be on the same field with
the stars of the United States, the Dominican Republic, and Japan. That can
lead to increased funding and support from national sporting federations, which
then grows the game worldwide.
Tickets available from:www.panatickets.com