Shawn Spradling

Man, that's a really good question.

Because I think that

looking forward to 2026 back in 2023 after the tournament everyone was just on riding a high of of that tournament of that at bat even at the end of japan winning um japanese baseball has i feel like exploded in popularity over in the states like everyone's waiting for the newest japanese player to move to mlb every single offseason so those kind of

Developments aren't surprising at all to me.

I think from a fan perspective, I think that it's been pretty much what I expected in the sense that fans are ready for the tournament.

And we're four months out.

But even earlier this year, when we had qualifiers in the spring, fans were locked into the qualifiers.

In 2022, there really weren't many people watching WBC qualifiers.

You saw conversation being had about the Brazilian team, about Taiwan hosting in the Taipei Dome for the first time.

All of this buzz that was happening in the spring this year, viewership ratings and numbers were shattered compared to the last qualifiers.

So that tells me that fans were ready, they were excited, and were anticipating the tournament coming forward.

It wasn't just like this.

I felt like in 2023, it was almost like a surprise to people.

Like, oh man, this is happening again.

This time people are actually prepared and ready for it.

So that's on the fan side.

I think when it comes to...

differences and what I expected from the league and from maybe the media.

I think I expected MLB to do a little bit more hype and marketing earlier.

Because if you look at like the WBC social media channel, they really don't post anything still.