What is Team USA’s World Baseball Classic record? What is USA’s best finish at a WBC?

The World Baseball Classic is coming together for the fifth time ever, and Team USA heads into this competition as the defending champions. In a sport that is widely seen as America’s game, it may come as something of a surprise to find out that the USA is not the most successful team historically in international competitions. Not by a very long way.

Of course, the current WBC is a very young tournament, but even in those four previous meetings, the only team to have repeated as champions is Japan, who won the first two. After that came the Dominican Republic in 2013 before the USA took the 2017 crown.

But the World Baseball Classic was not the first international baseball tournament. There have been several incarnations of the concept over the years.

The idea of a Baseball World Cup goes back over one hundred years, and the first iteration of the experiment came in 1938, with a five-game series between the USA and the inventors of the game, Great Britain. Yes, baseball, like rounders, cricket, and any number of bat-and-ball games, was invented in Great Britain, no matter what Abner Doubleday story you have heard. And incidentally, this first series was won by Team GB.

This original series was a response to the failure of the International Olympic Committee to add baseball as a permanent event. Even though it had been played at the 1904, 1912, 1924, and 1936 games, it was always in the form of an exhibition event rather than a medal event. And while Olympic baseball would continue to be played, in 1952, 1956, and 1964 before a two-decade hiatus when it was reintroduced in 1984 and 1988 when it was finally accepted as a medal event in 1992.

Since admission as a medal event in 1992, there have been only six Olympic Games with a baseball competition, with 2012 London and 2016 Rio de Janeiro choosing to omit the sport. In those six games, the USA won only one gold medal. Japan and South Korea each won a gold medal, but the king of the baseball diamond was far and away Cuba, who won gold three times.

The Baseball World Cup filled the gap left by the largely indifferent Olympic committee, and was contested over the decades 38 times. After that first, and only, win by Great Britain, the format extended to 16 teams and it took over three decades for the USA to win their first title.

The Cubans were far and away the juggernauts in the tournament, taking four of the first five titles. Venezuela grabbed three while Colombia and the Dominican Republic each took a title. From 1950, the Cubans grabbed another nine championships, with one by Puerto Rico and another by Colombia peppered in before the USA finally won their first title in 1973.

Team USA repeated in 1974, before handing the sceptre back to Cuba who held it tightly in their grasp until 2007. The only blip in their run was 1982 when South Korea took a title.

By this time, the feeling was that international baseball needed a reset. Partially in response to the elimination of baseball, yet again, by the Olympics, and partly as a recognition of the shift in public perception that international tournaments should feature the best professional players as well as amateurs, the World Baseball Classic was formed along the lines of soccer’s World Cup.

Two of the last three Baseball World Cups were won by the USA and the final champion of the tournament was the Netherlands, before the place of crowning the best baseballing nation was given over to the WBC.

Coming into this WBC, Team USA is ranked number three in the world, behind the Dominican Republic and Japan.

In all, international baseball has seen 49 champions crowned, and the USA has worn that crown only 6 times. There is a lot of ground to make up if they want to catch Cuba, who have 28 championships and are without question the true kings of international baseball.