[FuzzyRussianHat]

The 2034 Baseball Grand Championship was hosted in Hong Kong and was the 25^th edition of the event. Defending champ Washington was back to defend their title, representing MLB along with Birmingham. The other auto-bids were CABA’s Leon and Honduras, EAB’s Hamamatsu and Suwon, BSA’s Quito and Salta, EBF’s Warsaw and Ljubljana, EPB’s Irkutsk, OBA’s Tahiti, APB’s Tainan, CLB’s Changsha, WAB’s Bamako, SAB’s Delhi, ABF’s Tabriz, ALB’s Medina, and AAB’s Brazzaville. Earning the three at-large spots were SAB’s Ho Chi Minh City, WAB’s Libreville, and ABF’s Rawalpindi.

The Red Wings would surprise many by coming very close, taking second at 15-6. The top spot went to European Champion Warsaw at 16-5, becoming the second European Baseball Federation team to earn Grand Champion honors along with 2030 Berlin. Great pitching won the day for the Wildcats, who allowed the fewest runs at 51. They had a 2.34 team ERA and 5.30 H/9, both ranking as the second-best in event history. Warsaw’s ten saves also tied the event record.



The Wildcats offense was plenty good with 105 runs, second only to Ho Chi Minh City’s 107. They swept the top awards with Tournament MVP going to veteran RF Dominik Pucher. The 33-year old Slovak had 29 hits, 23 runs, 3 doubles, 12 homers, 21 RBI, .382/.478/.895 slash, 275 wRC+, and 2.3 WAR. Pucher tied the event runs scored record, set by Jude Hoffer the prior year, and was two hits from that record. Additionally, Pucher’s WAR was the sixth-best by a position player in BGC history.

Warsaw ace and 2033 EBF Pitcher of the Year winner Takao Watanabe won Best Pitcher honors. The 30-year old Japanese lefty had a 1.14 ERA over 31.2 innings, going 4-0 in five starts with 54 strikeouts and 1.3 WAR. Warsaw’s Anatoliy Gayduchenko also was notable as he stole 16 bases, tying the event record set in 2018 by Tomofumi Shimada.



For second place Rawalpindi, they set a new event team record with 58 home runs. Iqbal Kasuri had 16 of those, one short of the event record. Kasuri also had a four homer game against Honduras, the third such game in BGC history. On the downside, the Red Wings also had 269 strikeouts as a team, a new tournament worst. It was the third-time an Asian Baseball Federation team had finished in the top two, joining 2019 Tabriz and 2031 Hyderabad who both took first.

Birmingham, Libreville, and Ljubljana each finished next at 13-8. The tiebreakers put the Juggernauts third, Boomers fourth, and Lakers fifth. This gave EBF both the #1 and #3 teams. Ho Chi Minh City and Quito were next at 12-9, followed by defending champ Washington at 11-10 along with Tabriz and Hamamatsu.

Six teams finished 10-11; Leon, Medina, Salta, Suwon, Honduras, and Tainan. The Lions notably hit 57 home runs, which would’ve been the event record if not for Rawalpindi’s 58. Bamako and Irkutsk were both 9-12 and Brazzaville and Changsha both finished 8-13. Tied at the bottom at 5-16 were Delhi and Tahiti.

Other notes: Rawalpindi’s Rovshan Sultanov and Libreville’s Ibeh Ferguson both recorded five wins on the mound, tying the record which had been hit twice. Tahiti’s Dirk Murray had 68 strikeouts, second-most in BGC history behind Andrew Pendlebury’s 72 from 2030.