Tuesday, January 20, 2015

Japan Introduces Top 12 National Team Tournament


Tokyo has been chosen to host the 2020 Summer Olympics and as you may or may not know host cities are allowed to propose the inclusion of one or more events to their games. Since Baseball was removed from all Olympic Games after the 2008 games that were played in Beijing and since baseball and softball is so popular in Japan one could be led to believe that Tokyo is pushing for Baseball to return to their games in 2020.

To help push that agenda along Japan has announced that they will co-host a new international baseball tournament this year, called the World Baseball Softball Confederation’s Premier 12 Tournament. The leaders of the WBSC and the Nippon Professional Baseball League will co-head the tournament that will be separate from the MLB and MLBPA owned World Baseball Classic.

The tournament will be played in Japan and Taiwan from November 8-21 and will feature the men’s top-12 ranked national teams. The opening round-robin games and quarterfinals will be played in Taiwan while the grand opening, semifinals, and the medal games (gold, silver, bronze) will be played in the Tokyo Dome.


This isn’t Yankees related as no MLB players will be a part of it but as a fan this is exciting because it may lead to Olympic Baseball in 2020. Good call Japan. 

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Sorry for the Capatcha... Blame the Russians :)