Korea beats Japan in Tokyo baseball

South Korea's national baseball team advanced to the final of the 2015 WBSC Premier12 tournament by beating the Japanese counterpart 4-3 in Tokyo, Thursday.

The gold medalist during the 2008 Beijing Olympics is scheduled to deal with the winner of the other semifinal match -- Mexico versus the United States (slated for Friday) -- at 7 p.m. this Saturday.
 

Korean players cheer after crushing the Japanese national baseball team in the Premier12 semifinals at the Tokyo Dome, Thursday. (Yonhap)

The World Baseball Softball Confederation earlier unveiled groupings for the new 12-nation competition, dubbed the Premier12. The countries were selected on the basis of world rankings as of November 2014.

In the preliminaries before the ongoing knockout stage, Korea -- which had been ranked eighth -- was paired with Japan (No. 1), the United States (No. 2), Dominican Republic (No. 6), Venezuela (No. 10) and Mexico (No. 12) in Group B.

Group A teams were Chinese Taipei (No. 4), Cuba (No. 3), the Netherlands (No. 5), Canada (No. 7), Puerto Rico (No. 9) and Italy (No. 11).

The WBSC is an umbrella body established after the merger between the International Baseball Federation and the International Softball Federation two years ago. It created the Premier12 last year in place of the defunct Baseball World Cup.

The Premier12 tournamnent was initiated by Japan, which is reportedly aiming to garner resumption of baseball competitions during the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo. 

The U.S. had led the debut of the World Baseball Classic, whose first tournament was held in 2006.

(kys@heraldcorp.com)