There’s something very comforting about Spring Training. We go through the same rituals each year: players claiming to be in the best shape of their lives, all teams talking positively about the season ahead, players and managers wearing new uniforms etc. It’s familiar rather than formulaic and few people would want to see it change.
This Spring Training will be slightly different for four teams though. The Padres and Dodgers are making a detour to Beijing for a couple of games, while the A’s and Red Sox will have a slightly shorter pre-season (not unwelcome for most positional players, it has to be said) owing to their season opening series in Japan. In these cases, the normal routine has been put to one side as MLB spreads the gospel of baseball outside North America.
The globalization of sports has been a very hot and heated topic in Britain over the past week. The Premier League’s plan to alter the structure of their competition so that teams play an additional 39th game in a foreign country has been widely condemned. Many sports fans are traditionalists at heart and will always oppose change, but what has incensed so many people is that it is a completely blatant attempt by a mega-rich business to simply earn even more money. It is not about spreading the name of the Premier League, as the league is already watched by millions in countries all over the world. It’s certainly not about raising the profile of the sport. In fact, the international bodies, FIFA and UEFA, and national federations are opposing the plans precisely because they will be profiting the Premier League at the expense of the local competitions. Fans in Japan will save the money they might have spent on attending J League games so that they can pay obscene prices for a ticket to watch Blackburn play Portsmouth (lucky them!). The Premier League are looking out for themselves (and their pockets) and to a certain extent that is understandable from a business point of view. It is up to FIFA and UEFA to protect the interests of the game as a whole.
Are MLB’s foreign forays any different? Japan for example has a long-established, popular league and doesn’t need MLB turning up to tell them that baseball is worth watching.
Ultimately you have to look at the two sports’ positions in the sporting world. Football is already played virtually everywhere, with leagues in most countries and regular international competitions. Baseball is played in far more countries than your average Brit would realise (or want to accept), but it clearly lags a long way behind football’s global appeal. So there is a genuine need for baseball to reach out to new territories and MLB is the best vehicle for this crusade. MLB is undoubtedly the main baseball league in the world, in a way that the Premier League really doesn’t match. Many in England might claim it’s the best league, but in Europe alone the Spanish, Italians and Germans would strongly deny this, never mind the feelings in South America.
That’s not to say that MLB isn’t looking to benefit financially from their travels by promoting their brand, but there is a clear sense that this should have the wider benefit of promoting the sport as well. In this case, the two can go hand in hand in a way that isn’t evident with the Premier League’s proposals. MLB is also going about the task in a more considered way, playing the occasional marquee series without changing the complexion of their own competition. Their support of the World Baseball Classic also shows that they have an emerging appreciation of the place that international competition has in a prosperous new era for the sport. We all know how much the Premier League (from Richard Scudamore to the managers – some would add certain players to the list as well) cares about the English national team and international competitions in general.
Of course, the other main North American sports are also looking to develop into new areas. The NFL recently announced that their ‘London experiment’ will continue after their initial attempts to capture interest via the World/European league didn’t really work out. There are also plenty of rumours that this weekend’s NBA All Star game will be the scene of a major announcement that, if true, would even overshadow the Premier League’s plans. Whether a ‘World’ division with franchises in major cities outside the U.S. will actually be formed is still a major question mark, but the mere fact that it’s seemingly being considered says a lot about the way sports are thinking.
Some would say that in comparison to other sports, MLB has been a bit slow off the mark in their attempts to ‘globalize’. Conservative may be a better word to use. MLB recognises that a balance has to be kept between expanding the sport to new places and maintaining what is great about their competition as it stands. Long may that continue.
Although, bringing a few games to Britain now and then would be welcome!
