The World Cup makes me miss the World Baseball Classic

The men’s World Cup is great. Sure, you can argue about how the soccer gets sloppy sometimes despite the world-class nature of the players, since they aren’t regular teams used to playing with each other again and again, but on the other hand, it rules and is great.* It’s making me miss the World Baseball Classic, which we won’t see again until 2021.

*So long as you ignore things like, FIFA being horrifically corrupt and letting Qatar build stadiums with slave labor, I mean.

Remember last March, how we had the WBC instead of boring-ass spring training games? So good. And now we have to wait for 2021 to let the most tribal parts of our brains feed on baseball? Wow, rude.

Well, we don’t have to wait that long. For one, the next WBC qualifiers for 2021 will take place in 2020, and if you want to watch baseball that counts at weird times played between teams that were knocked out of last year’s tournament super early and teams that have never made the main tourney before, well, you’ll be in luck.

Even sooner, though, is the women’s baseball World Cup, which takes place later this summer, and, for the first time, in the United States. The women’s baseball World Cup is played every two years — none of this every four years awfulness — and will feature 12 teams. The host country of the United States will be joined by Chinese Tapei, the Netherlands, Puerto Rico, South Korea, and Venezuela in Group A, while Australia, Canada, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Hong Kong, and Japan make up Group B.

The tournament will begin Aug. 22 to Aug. 31, right around when many fans know the rest of the MLB season is devoid of hope for their team. Strap in and root for some World Cup action, baseball-style, instead.

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