The World Baseball Classic is  baseball’s answer to the soccer World Cup.

The WBC works out much more handily. It is held in March, when none of the baseball-friendly countries are in their regular season. So it has all the stars. Unlike the Olympics, which appears to be conducted at about a Double-A level.

The WBC doesn’t have the scope of soccer’s World Cup, but it seems to answer the one real question we have about international baseball — if we constructed teams by national polity, who would win?

And the first WBC, in 2006, perhaps didn’t quite answer that. (Japan won the championship, and if Japan has the best players in the world, than I’m the Queen of England.)

This Olympics thing … just doesn’t work very well. I think we have to concede that, after five turns of baseball in the Summer Games.

By the way, there already is a Baseball World Cup, but you are forgiven for not knowing about it. Even though it has been around since 1938.

I feel bad for softball, which also is headed out of the Olympics after this week.

Softball is lumped together with baseball by the IOC, which is unfortunate, because it’s quite different. The softball tournament here really does have all the best players, and softball as an international sport seems to have a little more traction than does baseball.

But because softball is seen as Baseball Light, as well as American … well, it’s headed out.

Softball may make it back by 2016. I don’t see it happening to baseball, though.

Have to settle for the WBC. Which will be fine.