Globalizing Sport: Assessing the World Baseball Classic

I like baseball, but I don’t really follow it that much. This article by Alan Klein was very interesting to me, because I didn’t know very much about the World Baseball Classic (WBC). It is pretty arrogant how Major League Baseball (MLB) can call it the “World Series” when it only involves North America. When the World Baseball Classic started in 2006, it was an opportunity to observe how baseball has globalized to other countries. It was interesting to learn how the other countries had reacted toward the MLB’s structuring of the tournament. I can understand why the Japanese and the South Koreans felt angry, because they assumed that the event would be planned by all of the represented nations. Like everyone else, I would have assumed that since MLB came up with the event, the American team, with their All-Star roster, would win the tournament. I was surprised to find out that the American team lost not once, but twice, to Canada and Mexico. Neither Canada nor Mexico won the tournament. Shockingly, it was Japan ousting Cuba for the Championship. I think the outcome of this tournament was a success. Klein (2008) says the other nations in the tournament “showed Americans that the game was not only played abroad, but also produced foreign players whose consummate skills recalled how baseball used to be played in the USA before commercialized era of bloated egos and contracts” (p.161). I agree with the article in that Major League Baseball is far from being as popular as football (soccer) and basketball. As Klein (2008) says “MLB needs to foster the creation of top-flight leagues and franchises in areas of the world that have been thus far ignored” (p.166).