Texas Rangers denied chance to host 2021 World Baseball Classic
The World Baseball Classic will return to the United States in 2021, but despite the efforts of the Texas Rangers and the new roof over their heads it will not be coming to Globe Life Field.
MLB announced the sites for the 2021 WBC on Tuesday, and Arlington was a miss.
The Rangers said they put in a request for proposal to host a round of the WBC, but were not selected. The event will be March 9-23, 2021.
MLB instead went with Miami as the site for the WBC finals. The other sites selected to host preliminary rounds are Tokyo, Taiwan and Phoenix.
The Rangers said they plan to apply to host WBC games in 2025.
The World Baseball Classic began in 2006 and is played every four years. The domestic cities that have hosted WBC games thus far include Anaheim, Los Angeles and San Francisco.
The WBC began as the creation of former MLB commissioner Bud Selig. The World Baseball Classic was a solution for the game to showcase its biggest names in an international competition without having to use the Olympics. Selig wanted baseball to have what soccer has in its World Cup.
The WBC tournament originally drew scorn and criticism from MLB teams for taking away star players during spring training. But MLB stuck with the tournament, and now it has gained enough traction that it is now an accepted part of the baseball schedule.
Players want to play in it for their country, and attendance has been strong enough to justify maintaining the tournament.
On to 2025.
This story was originally published February 26, 2020 at 7:26 AM.
