The “2023 WORLD BASEBALL CLASSIC (WBC2023)”, which was held at Tokyo Dome until the quarterfinal round, will soon begin the final round (semifinal and final). The best four teams who have won a tough tournament will gather at Lawn Depot Park in Miami, Florida, USA, where the decisive battle will be held.
Samurai Japan, the Japanese baseball team that includes MLB players such as Shohei Ohtani, Yu Darvish, Lars Nootvar, and Masanao Yoshida, made it to the United States without incident, and on March 20, local time, finished first in Pool C in the first round. play against Mexico.
Here, we will introduce the broadcast schedule and live streaming of the semi-finals between Japan and Mexico, which will inevitably be a fierce battle.
■Schedule/broadcast schedule
*Introduced in local time
*As of March 19, 2023
March 20 (Monday) 19:00 Game start
Japan (Pool B 1st) vs Mexico (Pool C 1st)
- Terrestrial:TBS series(From 07:00 on March 21, Japan time)
- Net:Prime Video(From 07:00 on March 21, Japan time)
■What is WBC?
The World Baseball Classic (WBC) was established on the model of the FIFA World Cup, with the aim of popularizing the sport of baseball worldwide. Four WBCs have been held so far.
The WBC has been held once every four years since the 2nd tournament in 2009, but due to the global spread of the new coronavirus (COVID-19) that broke out in 2020, it will not be held until 2021. WBC has been canceled. In other words, six years have passed since the 4th tournament, which was the previous WBC in 2017, and this year (2023), the 5th WBC will be held in four cities: Tokyo, Taichung, Phoenix, and Miami. Set in the stage, the tournament from the first round to the final will be fought over 14 days.
In particular, in the 2023 WBC, the number of participating teams will be expanded from the previous 16 to 20, and 5 teams will be grouped into each of the 4 pools from A to D in the first round, which will be the preliminary round. By the way, Japan’s Samurai Japan belongs to Pool B, and all Pool B matches will be held at the Tokyo Dome (Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo). For this reason, on the WBC official website, pool B is also referred to as “Tokyo pool”.
In the first round of this tournament, each team will play 4 matches in a round-robin format (round-robin), and the top 2 teams in each pool, a total of 8 teams, will advance to the quarter-final round (best 8).
The Japanese national team has won consecutive victories in the memorable 1st and 2nd WBC, but lost in the semi-finals in both the 3rd (2013) and 4th (2017), and the final record is 3. finished in 1st place.
