World Baseball Classic
Current season, competition or edition: 2017 World Baseball Classic
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World Baseball Classic logo
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| Sport | Baseball |
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| Founded | 2005 |
| No. of teams | 16 (finals) |
| Continent | International |
| Most recent champion(s) |
 Dominican Republic (1st title) |
| Most titles |
 Japan (2 titles) |
The World Baseball Classic (WBC) is an international baseball tournament sanctioned from 2006 to 2013 by the International Baseball Federation (IBAF) and after 2013 by the World Baseball Softball Confederation (WBSC). It was proposed to the IBAF by Major League Baseball (MLB), the Major League Baseball Players Association (MLBPA), and other professional baseball leagues and their players associations around the world. It is the main baseball tournament sanctioned by the WBSC, which grants to the winner the title of "World Champion". It previously coexisted with Olympic Baseball (until 2008) and the Baseball World Cup (until 2011) as IBAF–sanctioned tournaments, but baseball has not been on the Olympic program since 2008, after it was voted out by the International Olympic Committee in 2005. The final men's Baseball World Cup was held in 2011, and was discontinued to streamline the international calendar. The 2013 Classic, the third edition of the event, was won by the Dominican Republic in an all-Caribbean World Baseball Classic Final.
The tournament is the first of its kind to have the national teams of IBAF's member federations feature professional players from the major leagues around the world including Major League Baseball. In addition to providing a format for the best baseball players in the world to compete against one another while representing their home countries, the World Baseball Classic was created in order to further promote the game around the globe.
After a 3-year gap between the first two installments of the tournament, plans were made for the World Baseball Classic to be repeated every four years following the 2009 event. The third installment of the Classic was held in 2013, and the next is scheduled for 2017.
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