Marlins Park will have an expanded role in the 2021 World Baseball Classic. The details.
Marlins Park will have an expanded role in the 2021 World Baseball Classic, including hosting the semifinal and championship rounds of the international event.
The announcement came Tuesday at a news conference at the Miami Marlins’ ballpark during which the venues for the tournament’s games were unveiled. Marlins Park will also serve as a host venue in each of the first two rounds of the tournament that lead up to the semifinals. It will be the first time one ballpark plays a role in all three stages of the tournament.
Marlins Park will host Pool D of the first round from March 14 to 18, the North American quarterfinals (teams advancing from pools C and D) from March 19 to 20, and close with the semifinals and finals from March 21 to 23.
The news conference included Miami Marlins CEO Derek Jeter, World Baseball Classic president Jim Small, Major League Baseball senior director of international domestic player operations Leonor Colón, Miami-Dade County Mayor Carlos Gimenez and City of Miami Mayor Francis Suarez.
“We appreciate the support of our local mayors and the elected dignitaries who are in attendance today,” said Jeter, who played for Team USA in the first World Baseball Classic in 2006. “They understand that not only are we working hard to build a championship organization here, but the game of baseball is ingrained in our community and our residents’ heritage. ... We’re partners in making Marlins Park a true destination in big events.”
San Diego’s Petco Park (2006), Los Angeles’ Dodgers Stadium (2009 and 2017) and San Francisco’s AT&T Park (2013, now called Oracle Park) were the sites for the previous four World Baseball Classic championships. Puerto Rico’s Hiram Bithorn Stadium is the only other ballpark that has hosted multiple rounds of a single World Baseball Classic, doing so in 2006 when it was a venue for the first and second rounds.
Small, the World Baseball Classic president, said the bidding process took place last summer and that there was interest “from all over the world.” In addition to Marlins Park, Tokyo’s Tokyo Dome, Taiwan’s Taichung Intercontinental Baseball Stadium, and Chase Field in Phoenix, Arizona, will be first-round venues. The Tokyo Dome will host the second set of quarterfinal contests.
“When we got the bid back from the Marlins, we were impressed not just with what we knew, which is the enthusiasm that takes place here for baseball, but also we were impressed that Miami and Dade County were open for business,” Small said. “Things like hotels, things like support from the government, from the community here factored into the decision. Ultimately, that entire package was very impressive, and it impressed us enough to say we want to play the full tournament here.”
The World Baseball Classic is the latest big-name event to be held at Marlins Park. The ballpark last weekend was part of the Monster Jam circuit for the third consecutive year. It also held Super Bowl 54’s Opening Night ceremony.
“We want this park to feel like this is the community’s park,” Jeter said. “This is the community’s team. We’re going to have a lot of events here. We want to liven it up here. We want more people to come in here 365 days a year. We’ve been fighting to get as many events in here as we can, and that takes a little bit of time. I think we’ve made a lot of progress since we’ve been here.”
Marlins Park’s World Baseball Classic history
Marlins Park, which opened in 2012 on the site of the former Orange Bowl in Little Havana, has previously hosted portions of each of the past two World Baseball Classics.
In 2017, the Marlins’ home ballpark was a site for the first round of pool play, hosting the United States, Canada, Colombia and Dominican Republic. The U.S. went 2-1 in the round-robin portion, winning 3-2 against Colombia in 10 innings, losing 7-5 to the Dominican Republic and shutting out Canada 8-0 to finish runner-up in the pool and advance to the second round. The United States won the World Baseball Classic that year, a first for the team.
Small cited the USA-Dominican Republic game, one played in front of a ballpark-record crowd of 37,446, as a reason for Marlins Park getting continual support for the World Baseball Classic.
“That passion, that emotion, that excitement, the noise, is all something that’s very special and something we want to share with the federations and the players that represent the World Baseball Classic,” Small said. “We know we have a home here in South Florida, and we’re excited to come back.”
Marlins Park also hosted one of the two pools in the double-elimination second round of the 2013 World Baseball Classic, with the field featuring the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Italy and the United States. Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic advanced out of the pool to the semifinals and met in the championship, with the Dominican Republic winning 3-0 in the final.
“There’s a lot of baseball fans here in the Miami area,” Jeter said. “We’ve been trying to make progress in attendance for our games here, but we know the fans are here. We just have to develop that trust in the organization, but I think it’s great for the baseball fans all over the globe to come out here and experience the World Baseball Classic and the improvements to the park. We just want to celebrate baseball.”
Miami Gardens’ Dolphin Stadium, now called Hard Rock Stadium, was also one of two sites for the second round of pool play for the 2009 World Baseball Classic.
The tournament format
The World Baseball Classic, essentially the World Cup of baseball, is an international baseball tournament sanctioned by the World Baseball Softball Confederation and put on in conjunction with MLB and the MLB Players Association. This is the fifth installment of the tournament, which began in 2006 and since 2009 has taken place every four years.
The tournament format consists of three rounds.
In Round 1, teams are divided into four equal pools and play one game against each team in their bracket. The two teams with the best win-loss records in each pool advance to the quarterfinals.
The eight remaining teams are then grouped into two, four-team brackets and compete in a double-elimination tournament, meaning a team is eliminated from the competition after it loses two games. The winner and runner-up in each bracket advances to the championship site — in the case of the 2021 tournament, Marlins Park.
Once there, it’s win or go home. The semifinals are one-game playoffs, with the winners advancing to face each other in a winner-take-all championship match.
A record 20 teams will compete in next year’s World Baseball Classic. All 16 teams from the 2017 competition — Australia, Canada, China, Chinese Taipei, Colombia, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Israel, Italy, Japan, Korea, the Netherlands, Mexico, Puerto Rico, the United States and Venezuela — received automatic bids to the 2021 iteration of the tournament.
Another dozen teams will compete in a qualifying round at the Kino Sports Complex in Tucson next month for the final four spots. Those 12 teams have been split into two six-team pools that will compete in a double-elimination tournament. The top two teams from each bracket will qualify for the main tournament.
The countries represented in the first qualifying bracket: Brazil, France, Germany, Nicaragua, Pakistan and the Republic of South Africa.
The Czech Republic, Great Britain, New Zealand, Panama, the Philippines and Spain are in the second bracket.
This story was originally published February 25, 2020 at 11:16 AM.
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