The U-18 Baseball World Cup is the 18-and-under baseball world championship sanctioned by the International Baseball Federation (IBAF) and its successor, the

World Baseball Softball Confederation World Baseball Softball Confederation (WBSC; french: Confédération internationale de baseball et softball) is the world governing body for the sports of baseball, softball, and Baseball5. It was established in 2013 by the merger of the Inter ...

(WBSC), and was first held in 1981 in the United States. Because it is a world championship, the results of the U-18 Baseball World Cup affect the

WBSC World Rankings The WBSC World Rankings is a ranking system for national teams in baseball and softball. The teams of the member nations of the World Baseball Softball Confederation (WBSC), baseball's world governing body, are ranked based on their tournament re ...

. Several players who have participated in the U-18 Baseball World Cup have gone on to stardom at the professional level, including Japan's

Yu Darvish , more commonly known as Yu Darvish (ダルビッシュ有), is a Japanese professional baseball pitcher for the San Diego Padres of Major League Baseball (MLB). Darvish has also played in MLB for the Texas Rangers, Los Angeles Dodgers, and ...

, USA's

Clayton Kershaw Clayton Edward Kershaw (born March 19, 1988) is an American professional baseball pitcher for the Los Angeles Dodgers of Major League Baseball (MLB) . He has played for the Dodgers for the entirety of his MLB career. A left-handed starting pi ...

, Francisco Lindor and Buster Posey, and Cuba's Yasiel Puig and Aroldis Chapman, among many others. Prior to 2010, the IBAF organized the World Junior Baseball Championship. The WBSC was created in 2013 when the IBAF merged with the International Softball Federation.

Results

:;Notes

Medal table

¹ Chinese Taipei is the official WBSC designation for the team representing the state officially referred to as the Republic of China, more commonly known as

Taiwan Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia, at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the nort ...

. (See also political status of Taiwan for details.)

References

{{International Baseball under Youth baseball competitions

World Cup A world cup is a global sporting competition in which the participant entities – usually international teams or individuals representing their countries – compete for the title of world champion. The event most associated with the concept i ...

World youth sports competitions Recurring sporting events established in 1981 World Baseball Softball Confederation competitions