World Baseball Classic

The World Baseball Classic (WBC), also referred to as the Classic, is a quadrennial international baseball tournament sanctioned by the World Baseball Softball Confederation (WBSC), the sport's global governing body, and organized by World Baseball Classic Inc., a partnership of the WBSC and Major League Baseball (MLB) in the United States and the Major League Baseball Players Association (MLBPA), also in the U.S. The winning team is awarded the World Baseball Classic Championship Trophy. It is one of the two main adult baseball tournaments sanctioned by the WBSC, alongside the WBSC Premier12, but the only one to grant the winner the title of "world champion".

The tournament, proposed in 2005 by MLB and its players association, was first held in 2006 as an invitational event. It previously coexisted with Olympic baseball (until 2008) and the Baseball World Cup (until 2011) as tournaments sanctioned by the International Baseball Federation, the predecessor to the WBSC. The Baseball World Cup was discontinued after the 2011 edition, when the WBSC accepted MLB's suggestion to make the WBC the officially-sanctioned world championship, on the condition that the Classic should have direct qualifications and follow international anti-doping rules.