The World Baseball Classic is an international baseball tournament sanctioned by the International Baseball Federation and created by Major League Baseball , the Major League Baseball Players Association , and other professional baseball leagues and their players associations around the world. It is the main tournament sanctioned by the IBAF, which names its winner the "World Champion." It previously coexisted with Olympic Baseball and the Baseball World Cup as IBAF-sanctioned tournaments, but the other two have been discontinued. The 2009 Classic, the second edition of the event, was won by Japan for the second tournament in a row. read more