[FuzzyRussianHat]

The 2029 Baseball Grand Championship was the 20^th edition of the event and was hosted in Marseille, France. The defending Grand Champion Ottawa and the 2026-27 champ San Diego returned to the field representing MLB. The 2029 BGC also saw an expansion from 20 teams to 22 teams, meaning each squad would play 21 games.

Previously, the leagues with two auto-bids were MLB, CABA, EAB, BSA, and EBF. The other leagues would get one auto-bid, leaving one at-large spot going to the best runner-up from the one-bid leagues. The expansion made it so there were now three at-large spots.

For 2029, the auto-bids had CABA’s Ecatepec and Honduras, EAB’s Busan and Niigata, BSA’s Belo Horizonte and Arequipa, EBF’s Kharkiv and Zagreb, EPB’s Volgograd, OBA’s Sydney, APB’s Taoyuan, CLB’s Shenyang, WAB’s Dakar, SAB’s Delhi, ABF’s Baku, ALB’s Damascus, and AAB’s Brazzaville. Getting the at-large spots were AAB’s Cape Town, ALB’s Muscat, and SAB’s Mandalay.

The 2029 event was one of the most competitive to date with three teams tied for first at 14-7. Three others were only one back at 13-8 and another three teams went 12-9. At the top was reigning champ Ottawa, Kharkiv, and Cape Town. The Cowboys had defeated Ottawa 4-3 on November 7 and topped Kharkiv 9-2 on November 16, giving Cape Town the tiebreaker for the #1 spot.



Cape Town was the second African Association of Baseball team to win, joining Johannesburg from 2015. Like the Jackalopes, the Cowboys did it as an at-large team. This also made South Africa the second country to have multiple Grand Champions along with the United States. Cape Town only had a +12 run differential, but got by on winning low scoring games. Their pitching staff set an event record with 5.26 hits per nine innings. Cowboys ace Bekele Ayalew led the staff with 1.9 WAR, posting a 1.43 ERA and 47 Ks over 37.2 innings.



Kharkiv had defeated Ottawa 5-4 on 11/5, giving the Killer Bees second place and the Elks third. For back-to-back seasons, an EBF team took second place. Kharkiv was the top scoring team with 115 runs, although Ottawa narrowly had a better run differential (+39 versus +38). The Killer Bees’ mark was the second-most runs in BGC history behind Lusaka’s 116 from 2025. The Elks allowed the fewest runs in the event at 62.

Arequipa, Muscat, and Sydney were each at 13-8 with the tiebreakers placing the Snakes fourth, Arrows fifth, and Threshers sixth. Sydney earned repeat top four finishes, having gotten third in 2028. Of the 12-9 teams, the tiebreakers placed Baku seventh, Honduras eighth, and San Diego ninth. Rounding off the teams with winning records were Damascus and Niigata at 11-10.

Five teams finished 10-11; Belo Horizonte, Mandalay, Shenyang, Taoyuan, and Volgograd. Ecatepec was alone in 17^th at 9-12 and Delhi was 18^th at 8-13. Busan and Zagreb both were 7-14, Dakar was 6-15, and Brazzaville brought up the rear at 5-16.

Taking Tournament MVP was Taoyuan’s Wei-Yin Wang, the 2026 Taiwan-Philippine Association MVP. The 29-year old Taiwanese first baseman had 18 hits, 16 runs, 4 doubles, 8 home runs, 16 RBI, and 0.9 WAR. He was a somewhat odd choice considering there were others with seemingly more impressive statistics.

Among them was Kharkiv’s Yevgeni Gromov, who tied the BGC record for runs scored with 22. He also tied the record for WAR by a position player with 2.31, previously hit by Mike Rojas in 2020. Gromov and Baku’s Artyom Masharipov both had 15 home runs, a mark only hit previously by five others. Masharipov also had 29 RBI, tied for the second-most in BGC history.

Best Pitcher went to Ottawa’s Mbongeni Smith, a 31-year old South African who came to the Elks in 2029 after eight years with AAB’s Kinshasa. Smith was 3-0 in four starts with a 0.76 ERA over 23.2 innings, 29 strikeouts, and 1.2 WAR. The two extra games allowed Sydney’s Max Forrester to set a record for innings with 51.1. Muscat’s Younis Nouri struck out 64 batters, tying the mark set by Israel Montague in 2025. Relievers Ju-Hwan Kang and Jong-Hwan Park set the record with 14 appearances each.

Other notes: BGC’s 11^th no-hitter came from Mandalay’s Zahir Saleem on November 19 with 14 strikeouts and three walks against Busan. Shenyang’s pitching set a record with 1.65 BB/9.