The International Baseball Federation (IBAF; Spanish: Federación Internacional de Béisbol, French: Fédération internationale de baseball) is the former worldwide governing body recognized by the International Olympic Committee as overseeing, deciding and executing the policy of the sport of baseball. The IBAF has since become the international baseball "Division" of the World Baseball Softball Confederation, the officially recognized world governing body for baseball (and softball). One of its principal responsibilities under the WBSC umbrella is to organize, standardize and sanction international competitions, using the WBSC name, among baseball's 124 national governing bodies through its various tournaments to determine a world champion and calculate world rankings for both men's and women's baseball. Prior to the establishment of the WBSC, which has since superseded its authority, the IBAF had been the lone entity that can assign the title of "world champion" to any baseball team delegated to represent a nation. Its offices are housed within the WBSC headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland—the Olympic Capital. History The first-ever international baseball event was a series of exhibition games that took place during the 1904 Summer Olympics in St. Louis, United States. The exhibition proved so successful that it was given an encore at the 1912 Summer Olympics in Stockholm, Sweden. The two popular showings in St. Louis and Stockholm laid the groundwork for baseball's international surge in popularity, leading the sport to be placed onto the program as an exhibition sport at the 1936 Summer Olympics. This exhibition was extremely well received as 92,565 spectators filled the Olympic Stadium in Berlin to watch a game between two teams from the US. Following the success of Berlin, the first ever Baseball World Cup was organized in London, England, in August 1938. The United States and Great Britain engaged in five games, of which the British won four. The growth of baseball competitions involving the representation of countries, coupled with the birth of the Baseball World Cup, provided the need for an institution to help develop, organize, regulate and oversee these events, thus the International Baseball Federation was established in 1938. Conflicts of World War II prompted the IOC to cancel the Summer Games that had been scheduled to take place in Tokyo in 1940 and in London in 1944, thereby halting baseball's tour as a demonstration sport. Nevertheless, by 1950, the IBAF was able to expand the format of the Baseball World Cup that was contested in