The Baseball World Cup (BWC) was an international baseball tournament for national teams around the world, sanctioned by the International Baseball Federation (IBAF). First held in 1938 as the Amateur World Series (AWS), it was, for most of its history, the highest level of international baseball competition in the world. Even after it was supplanted in this regard in 2006 by the modern World Baseball Classic (WBC), the Baseball World Cup was still considered by the IBAF to be a major world championship, along with the WBC and the Summer Olympic Games.[1][2]
After the 2011 tournament, the Baseball World Cup was discontinued in favor of an expanded World Baseball Classic; the World Baseball Softball Confederation (WBSC) – successor to the IBAF – now organizes the WBC and awards its winner the title of "World Champion."[3] Additionally, the WBSC sanctions two new tournaments: the biennial 23U Baseball World Cup (begun as the 21U Baseball World Cup in 2014) and its quadrennial, flagship tournament, the WBSC Premier12 (starting in 2015), which involves the twelve best-ranked national teams in the world.[4]
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.
The idea of an baseball competition for national teams was championed by International Baseball Federation (IBF) president Leslie Mann. After managing to include baseball as a demonstration sport at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, Mann sought to organize an international tournament in 1937 between the national teams of the United States and Japan; this plan was derailed by the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War that same year.[5] Instead, Mann wrote to John Moores, president of the British National Baseball Association (the precursor to the modern British Baseball Federation) to organize a tournament between the U.S. and Great Britain teams. The 1938 "John Moores Cup," as it was originally called, would be retroactively recognized as the first Amateur World Series.[6]
Mann, along with Cuban sports administrator Jaime Mariné, helped turn the Amateur World Series into an annual event in 1939, this time held in Cuba.[7][8] The first and second tournaments featured only two and three national teams, respectively, but seven participants were invited to the 1940 edition and the pool would only expand from there.
For much of its early existence, the competition was limited to the nations of Central America and the Caribbean; the United States withdrew early from the 1942 series, and would not return until 1969. The next edition, in 1970, saw two European national teams (Italy and the Netherlands) participate for the first time; in 1972, Japan became the first Asian country to participate in the global baseball tournament.
Until 1998 the competition was limited to strictly 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 active players from the top-level major leagues around the world — namely Major League Baseball and Nippon Professional Baseball — making it a closer equivalent to the world cups of other sports, which commonly include players from the most prestigious professional leagues, than to the mostly-amateur Baseball World Cup.
The champions of the first several Amateur World Series tournaments were presented the John Moores Trophy, named in honor of John Moores, a sponsor of the British Baseball Federation and future Everton F.C. executive.[9] Like the Stanley Cup, it was a single trophy passed from winner to winner, with the names of the world champions engraved; however, only the winners of the 1938, 1939, and 1940 editions are engraved (England and Cuba); the United States withdrew from the AWS in 1942, and the trophy was apparently not awarded after that.[10][11][a]
When Jaime Mariné succeeded Leslie Mann as president of the IBF during the 1940 Amateur World Series, he renamed the trophy the Copa Presidente Batista, after Fulgencio Batista, the president of Cuba.[12] Mariné had participated in the Cuban Revolution of 1933 that brought Batista to power and had organized the dictator's Military Intelligence Service in 1935.[13]
