shoewizard
Hall of Famer
Joined: 10 Aug 2006
Posts: 3035
Location: In front of my computer
|
 Posted: Sun Jan 28, 2007 12:43 pm Post subject: MLB in China |
 |
|
| Quote: |
China offers market loaded with potential
Joseph A. Reaves
The Arizona Republic
Jan. 28, 2007 12:00 AM
Judging from the stories in the New York Times last week, you'd think the Yankees discovered China - and they were heading there to bring back the treasures of the Orient.
"The Chinese are shouting in China today because the Yankees are heading there in their latest international exploration," the Times wrote. "Vasco da Gama and Magellan had nothing on them.
"Marco Polo might have beaten them to China, but he didn't go home with a shortstop to replace (Derek) Jeter."
Neither will the Yankees, nor anyone else. Not for a long while yet.
But that doesn't mean the Yankees are making a mistake trying to establish a presence in China.
Quite the opposite. The move is long overdue. And other teams would do well to follow.
Baseball has a surprisingly rich history in China.
The Shanghai Base Ball Club was up and running in 1863, a decade before the game made it to Japan.
In 1881, the Imperial Court of the Qing Dynasty summoned home a group of elite Chinese students who had gone to the United States to study because the boys had fallen in love with baseball and were becoming too Americanized.
During the years between World Wars I and II, Babe Ruth, Casey Stengel, Waite Hoyt and dozens of other stars wrapped up their tours of Japan by traveling to China to play the all-Chinese Shanghai Pandas.
Units of the Communist People's Liberation Army were encouraged to play "army ball" during their Long March because their commanders believed throwing a baseball helped teach soldiers to better hurl grenades.
And until the Cultural Revolution began in 1966, China held regular national baseball tournaments featuring 30 or more teams.
But truth be told, baseball was about as popular in China as table tennis is in the United States.
That is changing.
Baseball never will become a national obsession in China. But the sheer size of China's 1.3 billion population, the stunning economic growth and the upcoming exposure baseball will get in the 2008 Beijing Olympics offer opportunities that can't be missed.
Major League Baseball recently opened an office in Beijing, and Commissioner Bud Selig has said he is toying with the idea of opening the 2008 season in China if the Olympic baseball stadium is completed in time.
The Yankees are sending four of their top executives - President Randy Levine, General Manager Brian Cashman and assistant GM Jean Afterman, and Michael Tusiani, their corporate sales and sponsorships expert - to China next week.
Their long-term goals are to expand the Yankees brand, set up a training academy and begin grooming the Yao Ming of baseball. It can happen.
The Yankees aren't visionaries. Longtime Dodgers owner Peter O'Malley was baseball's pioneer in China.
In the mid-1980s, just as China was opening to the outside world, O'Malley helped build the first practice field in Beijing and paid for construction of a baseball stadium in the port city of Tianjin, 75 miles southeast of the capital.
Dodger Stadium - as it still is called today - is home of the Tianjin Lions of the Chinese Baseball League, a Japanese-sponsored professional league founded in 2002. That league could be fertile ground for MLB's future in China.
The Chinese government has invested heavily in baseball in recent years, partnering with MLB to hire Valley residents Jim Lefebvre and Bruce Hurst to groom the Chinese National Team for the 2008 Olympics.
As host country, China received an automatic berth in the eight-team baseball tournament. A bronze medal seems improbable, but a solid showing by the Chinese would be a huge boost.
It might even go a long way to fulfilling the prophesy of Roger B. Doulens, a major working with the U.S. Special Services trying to help Chiang Kai-Shek's Nationalists hold off Mao Zedong's Communists during China's civil war.
In a letter to the Sporting News that ran in March 1946 under the headline: "Chinese Grabbing Chance to Learn Game," Doulens wrote:
"It is not beyond the realm of reason that the Sporting News will announce, some time in 1955: Lao Yi-Ping, sensational shortstop of the Shanghai Spartans of the Yellow River League was sold to the New York Giants for 500,000 Chinese dollars, the Chinese National Baseball Federation announced."
That never happened. By 1955, the Giants were entering their final years in New York and Chinese dollars disappeared with the coming of a Communist regime.
But maybe Doulens was on to something. Lao Yi-Ping sounds a lot like Yao Ming. |
|
|
FAQ
Search
Memberlist
Usergroups
Register
Profile
Log in to check your private messages
Log in
