I do wonder why the every 4 year pattern became so ingrained into sports for 'World Cup' type events. In an athletes career 4 years is a lifetime - for baseball .... 17 in most cases too young to even be drafted - 21 you are a super prospect, 25 you are fighting to get a last shot at an everyday job - 29 you are in your prime - 33 you are downhill and probably done - 37 often you are starting to coach - 41 only the best of the best are still playing - 45 you can count the number of guys on your fingers who make it this far - 49 you are now just counting on one hand.

I suspect a lot of players would enjoy it every 2 years as spring is very dull otherwise for them. I suspect a lot of teams would prefer every 10 years :P

I assume the easy answer is "the Olympics". But that of course raises the question of why the Olympics started out as a four year program. I assume there's an easy answer to that one as well, but I don't know much about Olympic history. Perhaps due to the fact that it was a largely (entirely?) amateur event? It's kind of hard to haul off to another continent for a month every year if you're working as a bank clerk.

Hockey seems to manage a World Championship every year, though the every-four-years Olympic event is the money tournament. The various regional tournaments and qualifications keep soccer players playing internationally pretty much every year. The Euros don't mean as much as the World Cup, but they certainly mean quite a bit.

I do see Rollins's point, it's probably easier to feel connected to an event like the WBC when you know you'll be back again soon (or even next year!). I suppose there are logistics that make that difficult, but it's nice to see some top players excited about the WBC.

why the Olympics started out as a four year program

That's the ancient Greek cycle, a four-year Olympiad, and when it comes to the reasons for that, it's as mysterious as a lot of other classical ritual. It's vaguely like the Roman "lustrum," a five-year period punctuated by ritual observances. Both seem natural enough for solemnities that would be less imposing if conducted annually or biennially, but like a lot of "natural"-seeming things, they're really fairly arbitrary.

17 in most cases too young to even be drafted - 21 you are a super prospect, 25 you are fighting to get a last shot at an everyday job - 29 you are in your prime - 33 you are downhill and probably done - 37 often you are starting to coach - 41 only the best of the best are still playing - 45 you can count the number of guys on your fingers who make it this far - 49 you are now just counting on one hand.

Clearly, someone juiced between 25 and 29.

Also, holding Olympics too often would have interfered too much with the Greeks' favorite sport, warfare.

Great, so now we only have to wait two years to see which superstar snubs their national team... A Korean