Baseball World Cup

The Baseball World Cup was held 38 times; the final one was in 2011 in Panama. The first tournament, held in 1938, featured only two teams, but the last tournament included 22 participants; the previous two featured 16 and 18 teams (in 2007 and 2005, respectively). The World Cup was originally called the Amateur World Series, until the tournament in 1988. Until 1988, the Amateur World Series was held in intervals of one to four years, except for the eight-year period from 1953 to 1961. From 1988 to 2001, the Baseball World Cup was held in intervals of two to four years. After 2001, the tournament was held every two years.

Until 1998 the competition was limited to amateur players. After 1998, professional minor league players competed, but Major League Baseball did not allow its players to participate. In the months leading up to the high-profile first World Baseball Classic in 2006, many commentators heralded it as a "Baseball World Cup", perhaps not realizing that a tournament of that description already existed and had for almost seventy years. However, the 2006 World Baseball Classic was the first international baseball tournament to include players from the professional major leagues around the world, making it a closer equivalent to the world cups of other sports—which commonly include players from the most prestigious professional leagues of each respective sport—than to the amateur or non-elite Baseball World Cup.

• Women's Baseball World Cup
• Baseball awards#World
• Baseball at the Summer Olympics
• Intercontinental Cup (International Baseball Federation (IBAF))
• WBSC Premier12
• World Baseball Classic

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Baseball World Cup.

• 2009 Baseball World Cup