TOKYO -- Korea began its week celebrating home runs by spreading their arms wide as if they were on an airplane, carrying an inflatable "M" to stand for Miami. On Monday night, needing a win against Australia and for everything to go exactly right, it made it happen. Forget the

TOKYO -- Baseball has taken Todd Van Steensel around the world. He's pitched in the Minors for the Phillies and Twins, played for Kinheim in Holland's Honkbal Hoofdklasse, Guadalajara in the Mexican League (for current Mexican national team manager Benji Gil), the Tigres de Aragua in Venezuela's Winter League and

TOKYO – For nearly seven innings, one of the greatest upsets in international baseball history was in the making. With Japan having already qualified for the quarterfinals after Chinese Taipei defeated Korea earlier on Sunday, Australia was in position to book its own ticket with a victory against the defending

Facing Shohei Ohtani with the bases loaded in a tie game is a scary situation for any opponent. Team Australia found itself in that predicament in the fourth inning of Sunday’s World Baseball Classic game vs. Team Japan. Then catcher Robbie Perkins bailed out the Aussies with some heads-up defense

TOKYO -- Pressure doesn’t faze Tim Kennelly. How could it? The longtime captain for Team Australia -- he’s held the role since 2018 -- has been in real pressure-packed situations: When he’s away from the field, he’s a firefighter in his hometown of Perth. (He’s not the only firefighter in

TOKYO – When Curtis Mead was growing up, his father, Tim – himself an Australian Baseball League player – tried to push him toward Australian Rules Football. Coming from Australia, a country not traditionally known for its baseball, his father thought a career in the Australian Football League was a

TOKYO – Travis Bazzana, the No. 1 overall pick in the 2024 Draft, had been dreaming of this moment for years. In college, he kept a note on his phone outlining his dream 2026 World Baseball Classic lineup, with his name penciled atop manager Dave Nilsson’s lineup. On Thursday, inside

Get ready to dive into World Baseball Classic pool play. The 2026 tournament, which gets underway this week, features four pools: A, B, C and D. Each of those pools consists of five teams battling it out in a round-robin format. The top two teams from each pool then advance

When Team Australia held on to beat Korea, 8-7, in a close opening game of the 2023 World Baseball Classic, Travis Bazzana was a sophomore at Oregon State University, watching the game as a fan. Three years later, as Australia prepares to face Chinese Taipei on Wednesday (Thursday, local time)

GOODYEAR, Ariz. -- Representing Australia in the World Baseball Classic is something that has always been on Travis Bazzana’s radar. It’s a dream that dates to his childhood, when the now-23-year-old would glue himself to a TV to watch his idols play for his native country’s national team. When the

Below is a list of the players in every Major League organization who have been included on the rosters for the 2026 World Baseball Classic. Pitchers denoted with ^ are part of the Designated Pitcher Pool (DPP), a reserve of up to six pitchers per federation that can be called

The World Baseball Classic begins on Wednesday, March 4, at 10 p.m. ET in a game between Australia and Chinese Taipei. It will kick off a fortnight of absolute madness, with the best baseball players on the planet highly motivated by patriotism, pride and plain old competitiveness squaring off in

TOKYO -- With everything on the line and a chance to reach the second round for the first time in each country’s history, Australia and the Czech Republic turned to their veteran stars. When all was said and done, Australia moved on to the quarterfinals with an 8-3 victory.

TOKYO -- Yoshinobu Yamamoto has won back-to-back Sawamura Awards – the Japanese equivalent of the Cy Young. Most fans in Japan assume a trip to the Majors awaits in his future. He wears No. 18, the number usually reserved for the staff ace in Japan. And yet, on this incredibly

TOKYO -- The 24-year-old right-hander from New South Wales had wrapped up his first season in the Australia Baseball League with the Sydney Blue Sox. So, with the option between a long offseason or continuing to play ball, Coen Wynne went back to his old club team, the Baulkham Hills

It’s nearly here. After a six-year wait, the World Baseball Classic has returned, and it’s bigger than ever. That’s not hyperbole, either: The tournament field has been expanded to 20 teams, with three first-time participants in Great Britain, the Czech Republic and Nicaragua hoping for a Cinderella run. But they’ll

Baseball was first played Down Under not long after the game rose to prominence in the United States. America’s national pastime was brought to Australia by American gold miners, who would play on the gold fields of Ballarat while on breaks in the 1850s. Thus began Australia’s love of baseball,