2009 World Baseball Classic Venues

The 2009 World Baseball Classic will have more of an international flavor as Major League Baseball executives announced recently at a Tokyo Press conference that all four first-round groups will play outside the United States.

The Tokyo Dome will be the Pool A venue, joining San Juan’s Hiram Bithorn Stadium as the other remaining first-round venue from 2006. Mexico City’s Estadio Foro Sol and Toronto’s Rogers Centre will host the remaining first-round pool contests.

Defending champion Japan, 2006 semifinalist South Korea, Taiwan and China have all been invited to begin the tournament in Tokyo on March 5. Nippon Professional Baseball and the Japanese players union have yet to accept MLB’s invitation.

Within the groups, the format has changed from a round robin to double elimination, eliminating tie-breaking formulas. While the total number of games will stay the same, it will require games be played out to their conclusion–a concern for Japanese organizers unaccustomed to the messy details of marathon extra-inning games.

In the inaugural World Baseball Classic, Japan advanced to the semifinals thanks to a tiebreaker after finishing its second-round pool as part of a three-way tie with the United States and Mexico.

The new format also provides for knockout games as teams with one loss will play each other in a loser’s bracket. But because the two remaining teams in each group will advance regardless of the result of the pool finale between them, the outcome of that game will only determine seeding in the next round.

Due to criticism of the original format, which had Japan and South Korea meeting each other three times but precluded the chance of their meeting in the final, the semifinal format has also been revised.

Next year, the winner of each second-round pool will meet the runner-up from the other pool. If this format had been in place in 2006, South Korea - whose only loss of the tournament came in the semifinals to Japan - would have had to beat Cuba to advance to the tournament final against the winner between Japan and the Dominican Republic.