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.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Sorry for the Capatcha... Blame the Russians :)