National team rosters for the 2023 version of the World Baseball Classic (WBC) were revealed on Thursday, and in many respects, they were more or less what you’d expect. A few teams look stacked, a few teams look like they’re just there to round out the field, and I’m sure some people gained knowledge they didn’t have about a given player’s country of origin and/or heritage.
The WBC remains a weird event in a weird metaphysical place. The intent is, as far as I understand it, for it to be the equivalent of the (FIFA) World Cup, but it’s definitely not the World Cup — this isn’t an article about the theoretical and real problems with the WBC, but that article almost writes itself and its contents loom over the entirety of the proceedings.