Baseball tourney approved

This is going to be fun. Baseball is going to become even more worldly.

Major League Baseball announced Wednesday that the long sought world championship tournament will be played next year and be called the World Baseball Classic.

The idea has been germinating for years, but trying to work out a deal with the players, owners, and international bodies caused one postponement after another.

Sixteen teams will be involved in four-team round-robin play. Japan, Puerto Rico, Florida, and Arizona are the expected sites.

The top two teams in each group will they play an eight-team round robin in major league parks yet to be determined. The top four of that round will go to a single-elimination series to decide the world champion.

Teams will be invited by invitation. Reports from players say the pools will be: (1) U.S., Canada, Mexico, and South Africa; (2) Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and China; (3) Puerto Rico, Panama, Italy, and Cuba (will Cuba agree?); (4) Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Australia, and the Netherlands.

All MLB players are eligible to go. Some teams are already worried about injuries.

The intriguing part is that the games will be played in March with an initial final game set for March 20. Yes, that is most of spring training.

Over the past two decades players have complained about spring training being too long and unnecessary. Spring games have become moneymakers for the clubs. There is no other reason for spring training to last more than two weeks.

That’s why the MLB Players’ Association has agreed to the classic. Those selected to play on the national teams, and that will include most of the names in the game, will get in a week or more of work before the round robins begin.

Pitchers and catchers come to camps early anyway, usually in the third week of February. The Classic rosters will allow for 27 players to provide extra pitching.

The end of the Classic will allow players to go back to camp for a couple of weeks just so the major league teams can mesh. The regular season will begin the first week in April.

The biggest side effect will be on those spring games where fans have come to see the stars and they will not be there. Scheduling Classic games in Florida and Arizona will remove some of the sting for spring fans.

The loudest howl will come from the cities that have forked over tax dollars to build spring facilities for the major league teams and are not sites for Classic games.

What will really raise the ire of those cities is MLB using the Classic games as a reason to get even more money and perks out of the cities that are selected in Florida and Arizona.

Someday cities will learn baseball is a business and there was never a good reason to pump tax dollars into stadiums in the first place. When a bigger dollar appears, the business of MLB could care less about what you gave them yesterday.

That does not remove the excitement of a true international series for baseball scheduled to be played in 2006, 2009, and every four years thereafter.

Old Town native Gary Thorne is an ESPN and ABC sportscaster.