NPB Schedules World Baseball Classic Meeting

Executives from the 12 teams of Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB) league will meet on August 20 to discuss a strategy regarding how to persuade NPB’s players union to participate in the 2013 World Baseball Classic.

Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters executive, Toshimasa Shimada, who chairs NPB’s committee on int’l relations, returned from New York two days after meeting with tournament organisers to try to gain concessions that will bring Japan’s reluctant players on board.

Tournament organisers, however, rejected Japan’s latest demands, saying that the issue needs to be resolved between NPB and the union. Shimada said: “There is no change to the current severe conditions.”