Welcome back to the World Baseball Classic. The tournament will kick off Tuesday when Cuba plays the Netherlands at 11 p.m. ET, and Wednesday, a full slate of opening-round games will follow. It’s been a long time since the last WBC—six years!—and if you’ve forgotten in the interim, the event is one of the most delightful on the baseball calendar, not quite like anything else in the sport. There are plenty of reasons to tune in. Here are just a few.
1. The joy of different baseball experiences
The WBC is built around the idea that baseball is global. That’s certainly (and increasingly) true. But if baseball works as a universal language, it does so only through distinct, varied dialects.
