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<\/p>\nMIAMI \u2014 Well before first pitch during the World Baseball Classic, musicians march through the concourse at loanDepot Park, the Miami Marlins\u2019 stadium, waving their country\u2019s flag. Onlookers reach for their phones to film the packed walkway, and the volume only increases at game time.<\/p>\n
Aaron Judge, the New York Yankees superstar who\u2019s playing for Team USA during the WBC, went so far as to say the atmosphere has been \u201cbigger and better than the World Series.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople are just roaming around wearing baseball shirts,\u201d Miami mayor Eileen Higgins said. \u201cYou would think everybody in town was a baseball player for the past couple of weeks.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n <\/p>\n
BEAT OUR EXPERTS<\/p>\n
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Strong attendance in Miami is a key reason that some tournament officials hope that going forward, the city could wind up a de facto, permanent host for the WBC\u2019s final rounds \u2014 something the mayor is openly stumping for. This year\u2019s WBC champion will be crowned tonight in an 8 p.m. match-up at loanDepot Park between the U.S. and Venezuela. Miami hosted the 2023 WBC\u2019s championship game as well, and although the Marlins typically have poor attendance in their regular season, these tournaments have been a different story.<\/p>\n
\u201cSometimes you don\u2019t even have to look, you just have to listen,\u201d said Caroline O\u2019Connor, Marlins president of business operations. \u201cAnd I think that\u2019s one of the great things, that you\u2019re hearing the fans and everybody coming and saying how exciting and loud the crowd was.\u201d<\/p>\n
A proposal process to determine future WBC sites will remain in place, and loanDepot Park will still have to compete against other venues. The tournament this year spanned four cities, with Houston, San Juan and Tokyo in the fold as well.<\/p>\n
About six MLB clubs have already expressed interest in hosting in the future, said Jeremiah Yolkut, Major League Baseball\u2019s senior vice president for global operations and events. Some of them traveled to Miami to check out the setup in person during this tournament.<\/p>\n
But Miami\u2019s built a case that, at the least, might be hard for others to top.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs the tournament evolves, we always want to leave ourselves open to see what\u2019s best for the tournament based on the market conditions and kind of where the game is at,\u201d Yolkut said. \u201cI think Miami is always going to be in the rotation in some way, but I wouldn\u2019t want to make any sort of permanent statement about, \u2018The WBC is housed here.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cThe unique thing about the WBC is it\u2019s the one event where we have the ability to bring the game to places that are entirely in our control, as opposed to, let\u2019s say, a World Series or other thing, where it\u2019s dictated by play on the field.\u201d<\/p>\n
Close to 72 percent of the population here identifies as Hispanic or Latino, per census data, and both the Dominican Republic and Venezuela made the semifinal round of this year\u2019s tournament. The teams\u2019 fans have shown up in droves.<\/p>\n
Team Italy\u2019s manager, Francisco Cervelli, is also Venezuelan. After earlier games in Houston, Cervelli warned his team of the environment they would face in Miami.<\/p>\n
\u201cI told them, \u2018Miami\u2019s going to be worse,\u2019\u201d Cervelli said. \u201cAnd this is where we have to take our time, pitch after pitch, because I was here in 2023 as a fan. I came to see Venezuela. It\u2019s very noisy, the noisiest thing that I have heard. But it\u2019s nice to play baseball like that.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\n The environments in Miami have featured raucous, high-energy crowds. (Photo by Al Bello \/ Getty Images)<\/p>\n
Cervelli and Italy were knocked out by Venezuela on Monday night in a 4-2 semifinal loss.<\/p>\n
\u201cEspecially the last two games (against) Puerto Rico and now Venezuela, it\u2019s just amazing,\u201d Team Italy\u2019s Vinnie Pasquantino said. \u201cI played in the Dominican, it\u2019s similar to that. It\u2019s just not as many people.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s just so loud. It\u2019s amazing that the passion people have for baseball here and for their countries is incredible. And I\u2019m so honored to have played in this tournament. \u2026 You\u2019re just kind of nervous all the time, in a good way.\u201d<\/p>\n
One official briefed on the tournament\u2019s decision-making process who was not authorized to speak publicly drew a contrast between the games in Miami and the later rounds of the 2013 WBC. When the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico met in the championship game on the other side of the U.S., in San Francisco, the stadium didn\u2019t appear to draw as well from those teams\u2019 fanbases, the official noted.<\/p>\n
\u201cLet\u2019s say you\u2019re living in the DR and you want to come to a game. It is less expensive for you,\u201d Higgins said. \u201cYou get to fly up here and stay with your family, so it makes it much more of a family affair. But I can tell you, it doesn\u2019t matter who we host.\u201d<\/p>\n
Higgins noted that there has also been no dearth of Japanese fans willing to travel to Miami.<\/p>\n
Nothing has been determined yet about the next edition of the WBC, including its timing, although many in the sport assume the next iteration will be in 2029, just as the current tournament was held three years following the last. But all the decisions have to be negotiated between MLB\u2019s central office and the players\u2019 union, which split control of the WBC, and there\u2019s been different thinking over time.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ll make an assessment,\u201d Yolkut said. \u201cThere\u2019s obviously a lot of things between now and \u201929 that will dictate some of our thinking on that, and we\u2019ll work closely with the union on what makes the most sense.\u201d<\/p>\n
Historically, some tournament organizers have believed the WBC should be played every four years, and in a year when the Olympics are not held. Baseball will be played at the 2028 Olympics, and major leaguers are likely to be allowed to participate en masse for the first time ever, but the league and the union need to work out a deal on that topic as well.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s considerations around the Olympics,\u201d Yolkut said. \u201cThere\u2019s a real question around feeding the international nature of the Olympics\u2026 is that best served in March \u201929 or March of \u201830? And so we\u2019ll look at the baseball calendar as a whole.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think four years is a long period of time. It\u2019s not that we couldn\u2019t do it. It\u2019s just that after a couple of years, people are like, \u2018When\u2019s the WBC again?\u2019 And by the third year, people are ready for it.\u201d<\/p>\n
The World Baseball Softball Confederation, the organizing body of baseball internationally, also gets involved in the scheduling question.<\/p>\n
Once the tournament wraps up Tuesday night, the process of choosing the next tournament\u2019s ballparks will begin quickly. MLB first refines its requests for proposals, the specifications it wants host ballparks to meet: everything from hotel rooms in town to space for media at the park. Then by the end of the year, the RFPs will likely be sent out.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve already talked to MLB, and they want to sit down and really talk about all the observations for this run of the tournament,\u201d O\u2019Connor of the Marlins said. \u201cWe\u2019d love to be the host again.\u201d<\/p>\n
Higgins, naturally, sees an obvious choice.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s just something about celebrating all of our different cultures that we do better than any place in America,\u201d the mayor said. \u201cOf course it should be permanent. I\u2019ve been saying this for years.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MIAMI \u2014 Well before first pitch during the World Baseball Classic, musicians march through the concourse at loanDepot…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":628112,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2395],"tags":[5,1816,778,58,4171,4,165,4820],"class_list":{"0":"post-628111","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-miami-marlins","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-marlins","10":"tag-miami","11":"tag-miami-marlins","12":"tag-miamimarlins","13":"tag-mlb","14":"tag-sports-business","15":"tag-world-baseball-classic"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116244704911225214","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/628111","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=628111"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/628111\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/628112"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=628111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=628111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=628111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}