Six years ago today (24 November, 2017), the first ever Baseball5 tournament took place in Havana, Cuba.

"I'm honoured and excited to be given the opportunity to manage the Women's National Team once again in 2024 and have a chance to win a world championship," said Pluta. His coaching staff will include Patricia Landry, Aaron Myette, Kate Psota and Ashley Stephenson.

The webinar, organised by the World Baseball Softball Confederation and International Testing Agency, will take place on 7 December in English with simultaneous translation into Spanish and French. WBSC Athletes' Commission Member and ITA Education Ambassador Randolph Oduber will answer questions.

One of the three groups, which make up the Group Stage of the XVIII WBSC Men's Softball World Cup, will be staged in Prince Albert, Canada from 10 to 14 July 2024 while the World Championship Finals will be held from 8 to 13 July 2025.

In addition to six winter baseball leagues in the Americas, Australia also has its summer league which takes place from November through to February.

Managua and Masaya will host the 12-team tournament. The participants will split into two groups, and the top two finishers of each group will qualify for the medal round and earn a spot in the WBSC U-23 Baseball World Cup 2024.

The Men's Softball World Rankings latest update includes 45 programmes across the five Olympic continents, including eight new countries - American Samoa, Belgium, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Honduras, Germany, Nicaragua and Spain.

Yoshinobu Yamamoto was part of Japan's WBSC Premier12 2019, Tokyo 2020 Olympics and World Baseball Classic 2023 winning teams.

Brazil will host a WBSC Softball World Cup for the first time, becoming the 16th nation to organize a Women’s Softball World Cup (across all categories) and the 20th nation when including Men’s Softball World Cups.

Japan runs the most successful women's baseball programme in the world. Daisuke Matsuzaka (pictured) helped Japan to an Olympic baseball bronze medal at Athens 2004.