Baseball is a game built around clear winners and clear losers, and everywhere it’s played, it’s structured around single-elimination tournaments of one sort or another. The World Baseball Classic, modeled as it is on soccer’s World Cup, is structured as a round-robin double-elimination tournament, which is a polite way of saying it allows losers to move on.

The 16 entrants are divided into four roughly geographical groups: Asia, North America, and two Latin American groups into which a few hapless European countries and Australia have been placed. Happily, and not coincidentally, each pool has two elite nations and two weaker nations with almost no chance of advancing. The exception is the North American pool, where Mexico and Canada are arguably equal.

In the first round games, which will take place in Tokyo, San Juan, Phoenix, and Orlando, each team will play each other team in its pool once for a total of six games. In the second round, played in San Juan and Anaheim, the Pool A and Pool B (collectively referred to as Pool 1) winners and runners-up will all play one another once, as will the Pool C and Pool D (Pool 2) winners and runners-up. In the semifinals, played in San Diego, the runner-up in Pool 1 will face the winner of Pool 2, and the runner-up in Pool 2 will face the winner of Pool 1; the winners of those games will then face off for a big trophy and a handshake from a grinning Bud Selig.

You probably don’t want to know all the intricacies of the tie-breaking rules, but suffice it to say that everyone hopes they won’t need to be in voked past the obvious head-to-head tie-breaker. Batting average becomes involved at a certain point, as does the drawing of lots.

Other rules, dealing with areas like pitch counts, are equally zany, and read like something out of the MTA union rules:

A pitcher must:

Not pitch until a minimum of four days have passed since he last pitched, if he threw 50 or more pitches when he last pitched;

Not pitch until a minimum of one day has passed since he last pitched, if he threw 30 or more pitches when he last pitched;

Not pitch until a minimum of one day has passed since any second consecutive day on which the pitcher pitched; and

Throw no more than:

65 pitches per game in Round One of the tournament;

80 pitches per game in Round Two of the tournament; and

95 pitches per game in the Semifinals and Final of the tournament.

A 10-run mercy rule comes into play after seven innings, and a 15-run rule after five; games can be ended in the middle of an inning, disappointing those who would like to find out how many runs the Dominican team can score off Jason Simontacchi. American minor league umpires will officiate most of the games – as they are generally very good and often more conscientious than their showboating big league counterparts, this shouldn’t be a problem.