After a three-year absence, the World Baseball Challenge is returning to Prince George, and organizers of the five-team international tournament have released the schedule.
Team Japan will take on Canadian Sidearm Nation in the tournament opener on Aug. 12 at Citizen Field.
Tournament chairman Rick Pattie confirmed Thursday Japan will be coming back for a third trip to the WBC, joining Sidearm Nation (Calgary), the Bahamas, Thurston County Generals (Olympia, Wash.), and the Kamloops Sun Devils in the nine-day tournament.
"Japan called us," said Pattie. "They liked the quality off the tournament (in 2013), the friendliness of the people and they just enjoyed the whole experience. They use this as a reward for their Industrial league champions."
In the most recent WBC, in 2013, JX-Eneos of Japan lost a playoff game to Chinese Taipei for the right to play Cuba in the tournament final. This year's team from Japan will fortify its roster with several player pickups. The teams have until the end of July to submit their rosters to the tournament committee.
Pattie had been trying to get Chinese Taipei (Taiwan) back to the WBC for a third time but said it would have cost the committee $30,000 to bring the bank-sponsored team to Prince George. Two-time WBC champions, Cuba, won't be back, having won the last two tournaments, in 2011 and 2013. In the past, the WBC covered all the travel costs and a daily allowance for expenses for the the Cuban team, which Pattie says would have cost the committee $100,000. Not having Cuba brings the tournament budget down to about $285,000. Most of that will be spent on providing meals and accommodation for the teams as well as ground transportation to the ballpark and extracurricular activities. One of those activities for Team Japan will be a tour of Pacific Western Brewing, a tournament sponsor since 2011.
Each team is guaranteed six games in the modified round-robin tournament. The teams will play each other once and will face two of the teams twice, leading to the medal games on Aug. 20. The bronze-medal game will be at 2 p.m., followed by the 6 p.m. championship game.
With the exception of the opening and closing days, each day will have two games, one at 4 p.m. and one at 8 p.m. Pattie said the schedule was shifted to later starts to better accommodate people who work day shifts and weren't able to attend the afternoon games in years past.
Pattie is counting on baseball fans flocking to the park. With 17 games he's hoping cumulative attendance will reach between 15,000 and 16,000, equivalent to the turnstile figures in 2013, when the committee made a small profit. He said the 2009 tournament, which included a star-studded Team USA, brought about 18,500 to the park. In 2011, rain plagued the tournament and attendance fell to about 11,000.
"With the calibre of teams we've got and the interest shown to me daily, we should be able to meet that target," said Pattie. "You're going to see some great baseball. You're going to see some future major league players. I think it's going to be a great tournament. You're going to see some unique pitching you don't see every day, from Sidearm Nation, they're all submarine pitchers."
The player/coach of Sidearm Nation is Geoff Freeborn, a former single-A sidearm pitcher for the Calgary Vipers of the Northern League. Freeborn is a WBC alumni, having played for Team Canada in 2011.
Thurston County will be a select team chosen from several teams in the Puget Sound Collegiate League, a summer league for college players based in the Seattle area.
Bahamas was part of the 2009 and 2011 WBC but was unable to cover travel costs in 2013. Pattie said most of the Bahamian players are playing college ball in the U.S. and said the level of coaching on the island nation has benefitted from a closer relationship with Major League Basebal.
The Sun Devils are coached by Ray Chadwick, a former major league pitcher for the California Angels. The Kamloops roster will include several players from the Thompson Rivers University WolfPack.
Among the officiating crews the WBC is lining up from B.C. and Alberta, Japan is bringing back an umpire who came to Prince George in 2013.
There has been much uncertainty whether the tournament was going to get off the ground. In the wake of the 2015 Canada Winter Games, which drained the sponsorship of many local companies and tied up volunteers last year, the WBC committee decided not to follow the two-year pattern and postponed the tournament to 2016, and it's been a scramble for the 12-member committee to have all the pieces in place this summer. The WBC received a $20,000 boost last week from city council, which will cover the costs of setting up temporary bleachers at Citizen Field, lighting the park, garbage disposal and recycling collection.
"That just took some of the pressure off," said Pattie. "Every day there's a new hurdle and that one I don't have to worry about. We're roughly two-thirds of the way to our cash budget. We're not getting the huge (sponsorship) dollars, but we're getting a lot more people giving smaller dollars.
"Its been touch-and-go for quite a few months. But when someone says I can't do something, there's no quit in me."
Tickets are being printed this week and are available online at www.worldbaseball.ca. Tournament passes for all 17 games will cost $199 (reserved grandstand seat) or $149 (bleacher seat). Single-game tickets will cost $15 and a day pass will be $25.
