The week started off with a bang, as the Confederation of European Baseball and its softball counterpart announced that they will transition into WBSC Europe, which will govern both sports on the continent (link). Little had been made of the announcement, which came at a conference of all 37 national federations.
Our interview with Todd Isaacs was picked up by MLB Trade Rumors, the sport’s leading new site:
We profiled former GB Baseball Junior National Team member Will Zucker, who co-founded Durham University Baseball with our own Gabriel Fidler, after he won a major award:
Minor League Baseball launched a Hispanic Fan initiative that will be travelling to minor league cities throughout the 2018 season (tweet). We hope to take in at least one event.
The Hardball Times published a must-read article: ‘The MLBPA’s Indifference Toward International Amateurs is Coming Back to Bite It’ (link).
Another article that is required reading came from MiLB.com on Jimy Kelly, the player that instigated the 16-year age minimum for signing players to professional contracts (link).
Robert Neustrom, with whom we spoke before he represented Team USA at last year’s Summer Universiade, was named the 26th-best university outfielder in the USA (tweet).
Prague will host a new international softball event this year, the Intercontinental Cup (link). The top-ranked teams from each continent will appear, which includes No. 1 New Zealand, No. 3 Japan, No. 4 Argentina, No. 6 USA, No. 7 Czech Republic, No. 11 Denmark and No. 12 Botswana.
We wrote a thread to expand on our Baseball America coverage of its Top 100, as the site released a list of all players to receive a vote.
We also broke the news that a new international tournament has been announced, as UAE will host the West Asia Cup (tweet). We wrote a quick update on the development as well:
We tweeted another great article from the Hardball Times on the cultural importance of baseball to the Japanese population in Vancouver, displaced to internment camps during WWII (link).
We broke the rosters for Cuba’s visit to Nicaragua for a friendly series next week, including Frederich Cepeda for Cuba (tweet) and Wilton Lopez for Nicaragua (tweet).
We added more breaking news from Botswana, which announced an international softball tournament for the weekend (tweet).
The Czech Republic will host a coaches clinic with MLB representatives (tweet).
In a week with a flood of information, we were the first to report yet another new tournament, the East Asia Cup:
Italy announced a training camp in March that will feature exhibitions against Germany and the Czech Republic. Phillies’ prospect Ludovico Coveri is slated to appear (tweet).
We discovered that Cambodia is working on developping youth national teams and that baseball will be played at the Cambodian National Games for the first time (tweet).
In case you missed our discussion of it in previous weeks, the Pan-American Baseball Confederation will have its first women’s baseball qualifying tournament for the World Cup (link).
Great Britain’s Richard Brereton continues to impress at Emory University:
Previous articles in this series include:
4-10 February (link)
28 January-3 February (link)
21-27 January (link)
14-20 January (link)
7-13 January (link)
1-6 January (link)
22-31 December (link)
15-21 December (link)
8-14 December (link)
1-7 December (link)
15-30 November (link)
1-14 November (link)
15-31 October (link)
1-14 October (link)
Month of September (link)
27 August-2 September (link)
20-26 August (link)
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