Women's Baseball World Cup Regional Semis This Weekend
If you’re looking for a Nationalistic Sports Fix, you could do worse than the Women’s Baseball World Cup this weekend in Rockford, IL, broadcast free through a variety of online entities, including the Bally’s Live Sports App.
The tournament started on Wednesday and continues through the weekend. As the semis, this is half of the final 6-team round-robin bracket, with the second set of three teams to advance after games August 23-27 in Taiwan.
The first round of games were yesterday, the U.S. cruised to a 22-2 victory over Korea, while Canada won 13-0 over Hong Kong, and Australia beat Mexico 12-2. The games this afternoon featured more brutality as Canada crushed Korea 15-2 and Australia blitzed Hong Kong 21-0. Tonight’s game, against Mexico could be a similar blow out.
Catch tonight’s Mexico/US women’s baseball game here. Games run through Sunday. Canada vs. USA game at 7pm on Saturday should be good.
The Finals will be back in Rockford this time next year. It was chosen for it’s connection to the Rockford Peaches, a founding team in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League which operated from 1943-1954 and became the inspiration for the Tom Hanks movie, A League of Their Own.
The Women’s Baseball World Cup began in 2004, a dozen years after baseball became an official Olympic sport. (It would be dropped from the Olympics in 2008.) If you don’t care about the history of men’s baseball world cups, blow past this next bit of alpha dominance play.
The birth of the men’s version is more contentious. The Baseball World Cup was originally the Amateur World Series, until 1988, when it became the Baseball World Cup. In 1998 it made to include non-amateurs, but the MLB refused to allow minor-leaguers to play.
That’s how the World Baseball Classic became the first international baseball competition with Major Leaguers in 2006. It was called the World Baseball CLASSIC because there was already a World Cup. Five years later the Baseball World Cup shut down. Another baseball competition, WBSC aka Premier 12 started as a four-year world competition in 2015 after the Olympics dropped men’s baseball.
(Baseball will be back in the L.A. Olympics on a provisional basis. In response the Premier 12 will have a championship a year early in its four-year cycle in 2027. Beginning 2024 active players on a MLB roster couldn’t participate.)
After winning the first two women’s world cups in 2004 and 2006, Japan has dominated, to a degree that shames even American women’s soccer. Japan won six titles in a row from 2008-2018, at which point it became a once every three year event.
The 2021 event was canceled because of COVID, and Japan won the title again in 2024, but only after the United States beat them in the Semis, ending a 39-game World Cup winning streak with a 4-3 win in extra innings, beating the tournament MVP pitcher. The Americans lost 11-6 in the final game, with Canada and Mexico third and fourth respectively. But it teases your hope, amirite?
A big part of the reason the Japanese teams have been so successful is that they had their own WNBA in the form of the Venus League, which began in 2002 and features 52 teams sponsored by corporations, universities and even pro baseball squads, with a four-tiered system similar to the minor leagues with a 12-team top league, 10-team sub league, then high school and middle school leagues.
In three weeks, a new “national” Women’s Professional Baseball League launches a few hours away in Springfield, IL. It’s not really a national league inasmuch as the teams are all housed in Springfield, playing a six-week round-robin series of nightly games Wednesday through Sunday, with a playoffs in September. You don’t have to travel anymore if you’ve got a media contract!
Originally planned to feature six teams, WPBL pared down to four. The first pick was Savannah Bananas player and 2022 USA Baseball Sportswoman of the Year, Kelsie Whitmore, but the second (three-time Women’s World Cup MVP, 36 yo Japanese pitcher Ayami Soto) and fourth pick are from Asia. (26 yo Korean catcher/third baseman Hyeonah Kim). Games are supposedly streaming on Youtube though there’s not much detail considering the league kicks off a week from Friday, on August 1.
You may or may not have noticed that last year a group called Athletes United inaugurated a national women's softball league which grew from four (SLC, Portland, Chicago, Austin) to six teams (Raleigh-Durham, OKC) for this season, which will be 25 games. It's received support from MLB and its playoffs are this weekend on ABC and ESPN.
Athletes United (run by George Soros' son Johnathan) also operates basketball and volleyball leagues, as well as a defunct lacrosse league. In those leagues teams operate as loose federations. Players are not committed to one team but switch teams every week of the season through a draft. The top four players who earned the most points each week become captains for the next week and form new teams. (The AUSL has actual teams, at least for the moment.)
There was also supposed to be a Professional Softball League made up of seven independent teams such as the New York Rise and the KC Diamonds, but many squads only played an abbreviated schedule in anticipation or ramping up next year. They have a streaming deal with Paramount's Pluto TV. There was the National Pro Fastpitch League which started in 2004 but folded in 2021, and after a couple of other attempts folded again in the face of these new competitors.
With all the money at stake in terms of the hunger for live-sports and an endless array of platforms, it's no surprise. We wrote about broadcasters (and advertisers!) hunger for live sports in our piece this week, Cheesecake Factory & the Last Great Circus: Metal Detectors Strike Shore Amidst Women Sports' High Tide.
