IBAT is ultimately built around amateur play — not as a lesser form of the game, but as an open one. A space for lifelong students, travelers, workers, artists, obsessives, former professionals, and anyone still willing to follow baseball somewhere unexpected.
IBAT began with a small group of amateur players in France organizing trips abroad in search of meaningful baseball experiences — not only to compete, but to encounter the game through different places, histories, and cultures. Over time, those exchanges gradually evolved into the idea for a small international tournament in Cooperstown, New York, where players from different countries could meet, mix, and travel together through the shared language of baseball.
Inspired in part by the international tours and promotional ambitions of figures such as Albert Spalding, IBAT views baseball not simply as competition or spectacle, but as a living cultural practice carried differently from one place to another. The rules of the game may remain the same, but the spirit surrounding it often changes dramatically through local history, ritual, architecture, politics, and community life.