Baseball World Cup

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.

Early international baseball competition followed the strict Olympic rules on amateurism, prohibiting "professional" players from leagues such as Major League Baseball and its upper minor league teams. Because of this, the tournament was dominated by countries with political interest in circumventing amateur rules, such as Cuba, which dissolved its professional baseball league after the Cuban Revolution and given all its top full-time players phantom jobs. The tournament was eventually opened to professionals, with minor league players competing, though the desire to use top-level, major league players spurred the creation of the World Baseball Classic.

After the 2011 tournament, the Baseball World Cup was discontinued in favor of an expanded WBC with direct qualification; the World Baseball Softball Confederation (WBSC) – successor to the IBAF – now organizes the WBC and awards its winner the title of "World Champion." 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.