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TAMPA, Fla. — The World Baseball Classic is coming to Toronto — and it's bringing Team USA with it.
Globesports.com has learned that the Rogers Centre has been chosen as one of the sites for the first round of next year's WBC, with Canada, the USA, Venezuela and Italy possibly comprising the pool for the event, which will be scheduled for the first 12 days of March.
Major League Baseball is expected to announce the three other sites of the first round Sunday in Japan, but Toronto's selection was confirmed Saturday by a Major League source. The Toronto Blue Jays have been working on this for over a year, but there was some question about the city's status after the Dominican Republic threatened to boycott the event unless Santo Domingo was chosen to be one of the host cities.
The initial WBC, played in 2006, was won by Japan, which beat Cuba 10-6 in the final at San Diego's Petco Park. Canada beat Team USA 8-6 in the round-robin portion of the tournament, but failed to advance because of a complicated tie-breaking scenario.
The first WBC was a largely artistic and final success, despite skeptics who wondered how Major League teams and players would react to the interruption in their usual spring training regimens.
Team USA in 2006 included a surprising number of marquee players, such as Alex Rodriguez, Roger Clemens and Derek Jeter. Because the event is a joint venture of Major League Baseball and the Major League Baseball Players Association, pressure is exercised to get as many name player as possible in the event.
Among the Canadian Major Leaguers who appeared in the 2006 event were Justin Morneau, Erik Bedard, Matt Stairs and Jeff Francis.
Games are also expected to be played in Mexico, Japan and Puerto Rico, said the source.
"It's a good draw for Toronto, because even the weakest team (Italy) might attract a few fans because of the sizable Italian community in the city," said the source.
During the first WBC, it was estimated that the host teams for events made about $1 million after expenses. That's in addition to the spin-off benefits to the hotel and restaurant business.
The Blue Jays have had no success in recent years trying to attract the Major League All-Star Game back to the city, but Blue Jays president and chief executive officer Paul Godfrey was said to have started working on the WBC more than a year ago, as an off-shoot of negotiations on the All-Star Game.
