The WBC is baseball's World Cup: a national-team tournament created by MLB and the players union in 2006, after the Olympics dropped baseball, and now run on a roughly quadrennial cycle with 20 teams. Japan leads with three titles (2006, 2009, 2023); the Dominican Republic won in 2013 and the United States in 2017.
The object of baseball is simple to state and hard to master: score more runs than the opponent before the game ends. A run is recorded when a batter becomes a runner and advances safely around first, second, and third base to touch home plate. The team in the field prevents runs by recording outs. Each team bats until it makes three outs, completing a half-inning; a full inning has a top half and a bottom half.
Pick two names from this sport’s all-time list. The larger number in each shared stat is highlighted.
| Stat | Babe Ruth | Willie Mays |
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The WBC is baseball's World Cup: a national-team tournament created by MLB and the players union in 2006, after the Olympics dropped baseball, and now run on a roughly quadrennial cycle with 20 teams. Japan leads with three titles (2006, 2009, 2023); the Dominican Republic won in 2013 and the United States in 2017.
The object of baseball is simple to state and hard to master: score more runs than the opponent before the game ends. A run is recorded when a batter becomes a runner and advances safely around first, second, and third base to touch home plate. The team in the field prevents runs by recording outs. Each team bats until it makes three outs, completing a half-inning; a full inning has a top half and a bottom half.
Every play begins with a pitch. The pitcher, working from a rubber atop a raised mound 60 feet 6 inches from home plate, throws toward the catcher through the strike zone while the batter decides whether to swing. Contact sends the ball into fair or foul territory, triggering a chase in which fielders try to catch it in the air or throw it to a base ahead of the runner.
Every plate appearance is governed by the count of balls and strikes. The strike zone is the space over home plate between the batter's knees and the midpoint of the torso. A pitch in the zone, or one the batter swings at and misses, is a strike; three strikes make a strikeout. A pitch outside the zone that the batter does not offer at is a ball; four balls earn a walk to first base.
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