Wither Japanese Baseball?
Eric Neel at espn has an interesting, if somewhat pedestrian, article on the experiences of Americans playing baseball in Japan and Japanese playing in America. The article ends on a sort of touchy-feely, I’d-like-to-buy-the-world-a-Coke note, though, suggesting that all the peoples of the world will one day play baseball in peace and harmony in each other’s leagues, which will all be excellent.
Only they won’t. The Negro Leagues were excellent, but once Jackie Robinson broke into the National League (absent the peace and harmony, incidentally), they lasted about as long as a television series featuring Special Guest Star Ted McGinley. The Pacific Coast League was once excellent; the Yankees acquired Joe DiMaggio from the San Francisco Seals. But once the Dodgers and Giants moved to California, the PCL was forced to kneel before Zod. Of course, sometimes leagues get better. The American League is excellent, notwithstanding its continued inclusion of that wart on the arse of humanity, the Boston Red Sox. But a century ago the AL was an upstart, derided by the NL to such an extent that the New York Giants refused to sully themselves by participating in the 1904 World Series*.
So which fate awaits Nippon Professional Baseball? The possibilities:
1) Extinction, like the Negro Leagues - This is probably unlikely. MLB already had teams in the Negro Leagues’ largest markets, so fans could just as easily watch integrated MLB. The onerous travel requirements likely preclude MLB franchises in Japan, even though Japanese markets are amply wealthy to support teams of that caliber. But extinction can’t be ruled out either, given waning popularity among younger people and lessened scope for Japanese companies to subsidize the teams compared with Japan’s boom years.
2) Submission, like the PCL - Some variant of this outcome would have to be the odds-on favorite. While talent does indeed move in both directions across the Pacific, and the occasional fat toad lands on our shores, for the most part MLB picks up guys like Ichiro and Hideki Matsui, while NPB seems happy to celebrate the exploits of Tuffy Rhodes.
3) Parity, like the AL - Not the most likely outcome, but not implausible. Japan did win the inaugural World Baseball Classic after all.
* I guess every 100 years Boston purports to be World Champion based on a series that is never played. In 1904 the Giants refused to play, and Boston claimed victory by forfeit. In 2004, there was no post-season baseball played, yet denizens of New England persist in believing their team defeated St. Louis in a fictional World Series. I don’t recall the specifics of why they didn’t play post-season baseball in 2004, but still - can you even imagine having such a tenuous grip on reality that you couldn’t tell the difference between what you wanted to happen, versus what actually did happen? I’ve talked about this at length with my therapist, who tells me such a response is actually a natural coping mechanism. Its amazing, the lengths to which the human mind can go in insulating itself from horrifying realities.
March 1st, 2007 at 3:09 pm
Wow, I don’t say this lightly. And it must be that I’ve come to this realization because I’ve now seen more of Tank’s work due to the website. But damn, there may be more issues w/ him than, even, well, Cliffy. There, I said it.
March 1st, 2007 at 3:30 pm
This whole notion of “free exchange” of talent presumes that the Japanese Leagues have any interest whatsoever in eliminating the current posting process (much as Scott Boras, et al, would love to see it gone… like yesterday). As long as the posting process is in place (and again, I don’t see it going anywhere anytime soon), MLB will have two options: (1) wait ten years for starts like Ichiro and Hideki (not Kaz) Matsui to become available sans posting, or (2) pay tens of millions of dollars simply for the privilege of talking to the top talent about signing a ML contract.
Yes… we will still see some top Japanese talent head this way, and we’ll be sending back the ubiquitous AAAA player (think Tom Selleck, in “Mr. Baseball”)… but I just don’t see a talent exodus from Japan as long as that posting process / 10-year free agency system is in effect.
And why exactly would the owners in the Japanese Leagues allow that to change?
P.S. It must have been something in the Black Hole that has adversely affected both Tank *and* I, long-term… not that that’s a bad thing.
March 2nd, 2007 at 1:54 pm
Does the posting/10-year FA rule apply to Japanese players that never sign a contract with a NPB team? If not, what is to preclude MLB teams from scouting and recruiting players before they sign contracts with NPB teams, a la how MLB teams sign *C1O6UyGeHar old* dominicans to contracts?