Baseball Champions League announced; USA Softball dominates

The international baseball and softball scenes continue to produce plenty of news, four months after a historic World Baseball Classic.

Some items of interest:

. . . The World Baseball Softball Confederation recently announced plans for the inaugural Baseball Champions League this fall. The tournament will bring together champions of multiple leagues, in a worldwide adaptation of the Caribbean Series.

The Leones de Yucatán, Mexican Baseball League champions, will host the tournament at Kukulcán Alamo Ballpark in Mérida over the Sept. 28-Oct. 1 weekend.

The Leones will be joined by three clubs: the Fargo-Moorhead RedHawks of the American Association of Professional Baseball, an MLB partner league; the Alazanes de Granma of the Cuban National Series; and Caimanes de Barranquilla of the Colombian Professional Baseball League.

. . . Congratulations to USA Softball on a dominant run in Group A at the Women’s Softball World Cup. Actually, dominant is an insufficient adjective considering the Americans won their four games by an aggregate score of 28-0.

That’s right: Team USA was unbeaten and unscored upon.

With the commanding performance, the U.S. qualified for the final round of the World Cup, hosted by Italy next July.

U.S. infielder Hannah Flippen was named Most Outstanding Player in the group after posting a 1.005 OPS in four games. Flippen, a silver medalist at the Tokyo Olympics, earned All-America recognition at the University of Utah.

. . . USA Baseball decided against pursuing a spot in the baseball tournament at the upcoming Pan American Games this fall in Santiago, Chile. One factor in the decision is that USA Baseball is mindful of limiting how often the federation requests participation of MLB-affiliated players at international events.

Affiliated Minor Leaguers and foreign-based professionals are expected to comprise most of Team USA’s roster in the next WBSC Premier12 tournament, tentatively scheduled for the fall of 2024.

The U.S. selection at the most recent Premier12, in 2019, featured now-familiar MLB names who had not debuted prior to the tournament: two-time MLB All-Star Jake Cronenworth, 2023 MLB All-Star Brent Rooker, Alec Bohm, Daulton Varsho, Andrew Vaughn, Jo Adell and Tanner Houck.

A formal determination of baseball and softball’s inclusion in the 2028 Summer Olympics, hosted by Los Angeles, could be made before the end of this year.