Cricket vs. Baseball

[izaaz101]

blunty51 said:

Onyxmeth said:

The World Baseball Classic is held once every four years and is more of an exhibition tournament. MLB players do not put their A game forward because they could risk injury leading up to baseball season mere weeks later. It's not nearly as important as the yearly season is in the MLB. All american players that want to can revert back to their country of origin, so teams are not actually formed completely from current professional players of that particular country. For instance, the Seattle Mariners' slugger Ichiro Suzuki played for Team Japan, not Team USA. To be fair though, Team Japan actually was formed almost completely from Japanese professional players playing within Japan. Countries like Venezuela had 2/3rds of their roster consisting of current MLB players. This is allowed to even out the team's rosters so Team USA and Team Japan don't dominate everything.

As far as I can tell, that list is incorrect. The following teams played in the 2009 World Baseball Classic. Expect a few new countries to be added to the mix in 2013 though:

Australia, Canada, China, Chinese Taipei, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Italy, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Netherlands, Panama, Puerto Rico, South Africa, USA, Venezuela

Ah, but is there a difference beween World Baseball Classic and World Baseball Cup?

Yes, there is. This is a tournament that occurs every 2 years (at least recently, from 2001. It's switched from being played every year, to every 4 years, with some unusual gaps in between). Players are not MLB players, like those in the World Baseball Classic, but are usually professional players.