The World Baseball Softball Confederation Postpones World Cups

The coronavirus has officially wiped away the 2020 international baseball schedule.

The World Baseball Softball Confederation announced on Oct. 13 that the U-23 and U-15 Baseball World Cups and the Women’s Baseball World Cup have all been rescheduled to 2021 because of the continuing worldwide coronavirus pandemic.

All three of the events will be played in Mexico. The 2020 Women’s World Cup, which will now take place in 2021, is set to be played from March 1-9, 2021 in Tijuana. The U-15 World Cup will be played March 13-22 in Tijuana. The U-23 World Cup will be played from Sept. 24-Oct. 3 in Ciudad Obregon and Los Mochis.

The announcement wraps up what has been a washout of a year for international baseball. Most importantly, the Olympics, set for 2020, had to be pushed to 2021 because of the coronavirus pandemic. The Americas qualifier and the last-chance qualifier for the Olympics also were postponed indefinitely because of the pandemic.

 

With those postponements, 2020 is the first year without any significant international tournament since the WBSC (then known as the International Baseball Federation) was founded in 1938. The last significant international event to be held was the Premier 12 in November 2019.

The 12-team field for the U-15 World Cup includes the U.S., Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Mexico, Panama, Venezuela, South Africa, Taiwan, Japan, Germany, Italy and Guam.

The 12-team field for the Women’s World Cup includes the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Venezuela, Japan, Taiwan, the Philippines, France, Australia, Cuba, the Dominican Republic and the Netherlands.

The 12-team field for the U-23 World Cup includes Mexico, Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, South Africa, Japan, Taiwan, China, the Czech Republic, Germany, New Zealand and Korea. The U.S. traditionally has not participated in the U-23 World Cup.

 

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