Baseball

3/20/2026 |  CNBC Sport: This year’s March Madness will test the health of Cinderella (CNBC Sports) This year’s men’s basketball tournament will provide another data point for how much NIL and the transfer portal have tilted the balance of power to the biggest schools.
CNBC spoke with Virginia Commonwealth University’s athletic director about how its success in the NCAA Tournament has transformed the school.
Former Syracuse men’s basketball coach Jim Boeheim said it will be ‘way more difficult’ for smaller schools to make deeper tournament runs in the current atmosphere.

3/20/2026 |  World Baseball Classic Final On FOX Was Most-Watched Game in Tournament History (Fox Sports) The World Baseball Classic Final had it all. 
A pitcher's duel. A game-tying home run. A clutch response. 
It all made for a historic night on FOX, with Tuesday night's game drawing over 10.78 million viewers, making it the most-watched WBC telecast on any network in the history of the tournament.

3/19/2026 |  New women’s pro baseball league turns long-held dreams into reality at Red Sox spring home (Associated Press (AP)) FORT MYERS, Fla. (AP) — Kelsie Whitmore stood near third base at JetBlue Park and looked around at her new norm.

Women baseball players from around the world tossed balls back and forth, sharing laughs and taking pointers from major league coaches. In less than five months, they will play in the first women’s professional baseball league in the United States in more than 70 years.

3/19/2026 |  MLB teams pressure WBC managers to be careful with pitchers. Venezuela pushed back (Associated Press (AP)) MIAMI (AP) — Venezuela manager Omar López went beyond the limit to help his nation win its first World Baseball Classic.
Major league clubs routinely place restrictions on how national team managers can use pitchers at the WBC. One key for López and Venezuela in Tuesday night’s championship game was that he talked some MLB team executives into dropping their initial limitations. U.S. manager Mark DeRosa accepted such restraints.

3/19/2026 |  The WBC is thriving. Rob Manfred says MLB might consider moving it to midseason (Associated Press (AP)) MIAMI (AP) — Having set attendance and broadcast viewer records, the World Baseball Classic will return in 2029 or 2030 and at some future point could be moved to midseason, when clubs would be less likely to restrict players.
Since the WBC’s inception in 2006, it has been played during spring training. Tournament rules include pitch count restrictions, and teams can demand tougher limits or deny players permission to participate.