World Baseball Classic announces 1st-round dates for 2023 event in Phoenix

Chase Field in Phoenix will host the first round of the World Baseball Classic from March 11-15 in 2023, the organization announced Thursday.

Arizona was among the four host cities for the first round of the 2021 event that was canceled amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Venues for the 2021 World Baseball Classic’s originally planned first round will remain for 2023. Along with Phoenix, they include Taichung, Taiwan; Tokyo, Japan; and Miami, Fla.

The 2023 event will be the first iteration of the World Baseball Classic in which the field of teams expanded from 16 to 20.

The pool that will play at Chase Field includes the United States, Mexico, Colombia, Canada and a to-be-determined qualifier.

Taichung, Tokyo, Phoenix, and Miami are ready!

Here is the official tournament format for the #WorldBaseballClassic 2023. ⚾️ pic.twitter.com/co0IxZZad4

— WBC Baseball (@WBCBaseball) July 7, 2022

The quarterfinals will be hosted in Miami and Tokyo, while the semifinals and championship round will run from March 19-21 in Miami.

Chase Field has hosted the World Baseball Classic twice before, once in 2006 and again in 2013. In both instances, the games were first-round contests.

Those were first and third iterations of the event. The D-backs’ training facility in Scottsdale, Salt River Fields at Talking Stick, hosted workouts for Team USA in 2013 and Team Netherlands in 2017 as well.

Japan (2006, 2009) has two gold medals and two bronzes in the history of the World Baseball Classic, with the Dominican Republic (2013) and United States (2017) earning the other two golds. Overall, seven countries have fielded national teams that earned medals in the event: Japan, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, South Korea, the United States, Cuba and Venezuela.

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