The Baseball World Cup was held 38 times; the final one was in 2011 in Panama. The first tournament, held in 1938, featured only two teams, but the last tournament included 22 participants; the previous two featured 16 and 18 teams (in 2007 and 2005, respectively). The World Cup was originally called the Amateur World Series, until the tournament in 1988.

The 1938 Amateur World Series was organized by IBF president Leslie Mann, between the teams of the United States and Great Britain. Mann, along with Cuban sports administrator Jaime Mariné, helped turn the competition into an annual event in 1939.^[5]

For much of its early existence, the competition was limited to the nations of Central America and the Caribbean; the United States withdrew early from the 1942 series, and would not return until 1969. The next edition, in 1970, saw two European national teams (Italy and the Netherlands) participate for the first time; in 1972, Japan became the first Asian country to participate in the global baseball tournament.

Until 1998 the competition was limited to strictly amateur players. After 1998, professional minor league players competed, but Major League Baseball did not allow its players to participate. In the months leading up to the high-profile first World Baseball Classic in 2006, many commentators heralded it as a "Baseball World Cup", perhaps not realizing that a tournament of that description already existed and had for almost seventy years.

However, the 2006 World Baseball Classic was the first international baseball tournament to include active players from the top-level major leagues around the world — namely Major League Baseball and Nippon Professional Baseball — making it a closer equivalent to the world cups of other sports, which commonly include players from the most prestigious professional leagues, than to the mostly-amateur Baseball World Cup.

The champions of the first several Amateur World Series tournaments were presented the John Moores Trophy, named in honor of John Moores, a sponsor of the British Baseball Federation and future Everton F.C. executive.^[6] Like the Stanley Cup, it was a single trophy passed from winner to winner, with the names of the world champions engraved; however, only the winners of the 1938, 1939, and 1940 editions are engraved (England and Cuba); the United States withdrew from the AWS in 1942, and the trophy was apparently not awarded after that.^[7][8][a]

When Jaime Mariné succeeded Leslie Mann as president of the IBF during the 1940 Amateur World Series, he renamed the trophy the Copa Presidente Batista, after Fulgencio Batista, the president of Cuba.^[9] Mariné had participated in the Cuban Revolution of 1933 that brought Batista to power and had organized the dictator's Military Intelligence Service in 1935.^[10]

• Women's Baseball World Cup
• Baseball awards#World
• Baseball at the Summer Olympics
• Intercontinental Cup (International Baseball Federation (IBAF))
• International Amateur Baseball Tournament
• WBSC Premier12
• World Baseball Classic

• 2009 Baseball World Cup