Plans are well underway for the World Baseball Classic  in all of the ballparks around the world.  Its hard to believe that the event  starts in about 3 weeks!     As for the international venues,  in the first round we have Hiram Bithorn in San Juan Puerto Rico, Fukuoka Dome- Japan , Intercontinental Stadium- Taichung Taiwan and Tokyo Dome in the 2nd round.

Hiram Bithorn Stadium –  The old park built in 1962 is seeing some upgrades to the field,  batting tunnels, padding,  basically a little  facelift.   Hiram Bithorn has seen 2 previous rounds of the WBC  action and the teams competing at this latin themed ballpark will create some real excitement for the fans!    Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Venezuela and Spain. each club loaded with big leaguers.   It will seat about 20,000 and is an open air synthetic turf field. Same dimensions of 325 down the lines and 400 to center.

Fukuoka Dome – Also known as Fukuoka Yahoo.    We last played here during the 2006 All Star Tour.   An all synthetic turf field with great site lines.  Not a lot of improvements but they will see  a few upgrades to the mounds and homeplate. It seats about 38,000 and was Japan’s first re-tractable roof stadium.  With dimensions of 328 down the line and 400 to center its a big park with quick turf.  The teams competing here are Japan, Cuba,  China and Brazil. Intercontinental stadium –  We just played the 2012 All-Star tour in this venue as well as several Baseball World Cups over the years.  An all grass playing surface that is undergoing some improvements to the outfield and infield for the tournament.   Our guys, Kevin Moses and Joe Skrabek are currently there assisting the local governments with the improvements.  With distances of 325 down the lines and 400 to center field we witnessed some great baseball here for the 2012 All Star Tour.  The fans in Taiwan are second to none when it comes to supporting baseball.   Exhibition games are being played in Dio-Liu stadium which is about an hour outside of Taichung.  Teams competing here include Korea, Taipei, Nederlands and Australia. Tokyo Dome –  MLB’s season opener took place here in 2012.  A very long history with MLB and Yomuri.  A great partner in developing developing the game in Asia.  They will see the basic improvements to the mound and home plate areas. A great ground crew headed up by Tamba and Hokike. Good luck to all the teams and federations.  Its going to be a great tournament.