Given that the baseball season is almost all of spring and summer in North America and Asia, I’d suggest a late fall/early winter tournament to be played in the Carribean. Puerto Rico, DR, Venezuela, Panama, Mexico…all of those places could host games. It could also be played in the US in Arizona, Florida, parts of Texas, San Diego, possibly LA, Milwaukee, and Minneapolis, as well as in Canada in Toronto or Montreal. Australia would be able to host games in December, as well, as would Tokyo and numerous other places in Japan.
In other words, for my money, the only time to play a true baseball world cup would be in the late fall (November and December).
As for the format? Well, let’s see. Canada, Mexico, USA, Puerto Rico, DR, Cuba, Haiti, Venezuela, Panama, Japan, South Korea, and to a significanly lesser extent Australia would all pretty much have to be there, or at least have a chance to qualify (but qualifiers would be tough to do for those countries, as they all have significant MLB representation, so I’ll just make it UN type format, with them being the permanent security council members).
That’s 12 teams, right there. I’ll assume I forgot 1 true baseball country, which gives us 13 teams with permanent bids. So, to make it 4 pools of 4 teams, we’d need 3 more teams to qualify through some kind of round robin tournament, or something. Let’s face it, France and Italy aren’t going to be pulling big names out of MLB, so their national teams, along with the various UK teams (who, frankly, I think should compete as the UK, and not England, Scotland, Wales, and NI for their own good), European teams, South American teams that I haven’t mentioned, and Asian/African/Australian/Antarctican teams would compete in 3 separate regional qualifiers: Europe, Americas, and the 4As. Out of this, we’d get the following seeds: one regional qualifier in 3 of the 4 pool, with Australia going to the other pool, as the weakest permanent team. The other 12 teams would then be sorted by approximate rank, and put into the pools.
Round robin, but you go around twice in the pools, 6 games in 6 days. Top team advances from each division, and then there’s a best of 5 round, based on reseeded teams (strongest remaining plays weakest) and a best of 7 series. The whole tourney will be done in three weeks, with games played like this:
G G G G G G O
G G G G G O O
G G G G G G G
where G is a game day, O is an off day. The whole tournament could be played in 4 stadiums, no problem, with games starting at 9am, 2pm, and 7pm. Games would be called off after 5 1/2 hours of play, or 9 innings, whichever comes second, so as not to delay other games that day. A tie would be worth 1 point, and a win would be worth 2.
As for the OPs questions:
1)YES. Absolutely. Wonderful idea. As long as there’s no DH.
2) It wouldn’t be during the season. See above.
3)Currently? I see the Dominicans, US, Japan, and Cuba coming out of the pools, but Venezuela or Korea could pull a shocker, too. After that, frankly, it’s anybody’s game. I’d love to see a Cuba/US or Japan/US final, though.
By FAR the most important thing to remember is the importance of the series in baseball, as you have to see every pitcher. The pools going around twice is the best way I could think of to accomplish this, but If there’s a better way to get the tourney done quickish, I can’t think of one.
