Japan and/or Ichiro to skip World Cup?
Japan’s participation in next year’s first-of-its-kind World Baseball Classic is up in the air. Negotiations are ongoing, with an important deadline at the end of the month. The Japanese players’ union is the holdup, citing scheduling issues.
If an accord can’t be reached, it would be a big disappointment. Japan’s tentatively slated to be one of the first-round host sites. A baseball-crazy fan base would be disappointed, and the tournament would end up being less interesting.
Perhaps due to this uncertainty about Japan’s participation, both Ichiro and Hideki Matsui appear pretty lukewarm about whether they would want to play.
Personally, I think they’re just taking a wait-and-see approach. The tone of the comments seems to be “we’ll see if this tournament works out, and then we’ll decide.”
This World Cup-style tournament could be great for baseball if the kinks get worked out. May negotiations be smooth from here on in.
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25 Responses to “Japan and/or Ichiro to skip World Cup?”
Your link isn’t good, Jeff. You want this one.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/mariners/2002342475_japanbase21.html
Thanks, I’ll fix it. Cursed AP wire.
Is it just me that’s scared of the possibility of players being injured during the World Cup tourney, and not being able to participate in the regular MLB season? Especially with it slated to begin in late Feb-early March (if I’m not mistaken) and most guys are just starting to fine tune their “baseball skills” for the season.
Where does the MLBPA stand on this? Are they willing to participate?
From the Everett Herald:
Of note: The Class A Wisconsin Timber Rattlers, who won the first-half championship in the Midwest League Western Division, will have seven players in the league All-Star game tonight in Peoria, Ill. Among them is shortstop Matt Tuiasosopo, a former high school star at Woodinville.
I am completely disinterested in World Cup baseball. Trying to create world wide rivalries where none exist is pointless and unabashed hucksterism.
Baseball is the only sport I watch consistently and the only one I follow in the off season at all. I can’t imagine a scenario where I’d stay up past bedtime to catch a game to watch a bunch of players I have little emotional attachment with. It’s the journey of the year, the drama of the season and the rise and fall of teams that make the season what it is. Some condensed tourney format is really not that interesting and I think detracts from the value of Spring Training and the season.
Hope to see it die of it’s over bloated existence.
Well, the World Cup isn’t necessarily for you, and may not live or die based on your interest alone. It appears to target the rest of the world more than the US — the world that is already used to staying up to odd hours to watch various nations contend for a World Cup, albeit one with a somewhat larger ball. Not to mention the Olympics. The pressure for this has never come from the US; MLB is only interested because they want to promote baseball beyond its traditional sphere. I can see how someone — even someone for whom baseball is a foreign sport and who doesn’t know the players — might still be interested in seeing how the little Dominican Republic humbles, say, Japan or the US. And don’t tell me Cuba vs USA wouldn’t be an interesting contest. But even if they don’t succeed at enlarging baseball’s appeal, the tournament should certainly be viable with a viewership from the combination of Japan, Korea, and Latin America (all of whom would love to see their homeland heroes all playing on the same team against the best from the other countries — just ask the Canadians who come down for Mariner games against Harden or Morneau); anything they get from the US is a bonus.
A World Cup would be insanely exciting, provided it’s well-designed. Major League Baseball will have to give up some control for that to happen, though. This isn’t NFL Europe or the NBA’s promotional operation. This is crowning a true World Champion (Boston being merely a North American champion). Having pulled a couple of all-nighters with British expats during the last football World Cup, I know how exciting a world tournament can be.
While I think the World Cup is a dumb idea, if there is one I’m certain I’ll be watching to see how the Canadian team does.
I still don’t understand why Puerto Rico gets its own team, though.
Boston being merely a North American champion
I hate this canard. Fifty years ago, this might have been true (and sixy years ago you’d have to say they were merely the white North American champion) but it’s not true today. Ichiro is here. Godzilla is here. The best baseball players in the world play in the major leagues. Even if the teams aren’t constituted around nationalities, the guys who win the world series really are the best team in the world — or do you think there’s a bunch of guys sitting around in Seoul or Osaka or Frankfurt or Harare that could beat them in seven games?
More baseball is good. World participation in the sport means more players that will be able to compete at the highest club level. Any fan of MLB that plans on enjoying it twenty years from now should consider how much better the game will be when in addition to the Carribean, Mexico, and Venezuela, we have lots of players from say Italy, Greece, and Holland.
The MLBPA of course will piss and moan. Their players already enjoy a ridiculously long off-season compared to their soccer-playing counterparts who “only” get a month or two off a year.
It’s funny how much our reluctance to have a World Cup of baseball mirrors England’s refusal to play in the first few soccer world cups. In the end I guess it might not matter. England still have one of the top soccer leagues, and their national team is second tier, but they frequently crack the top 10.
I still don’t understand why Puerto Rico gets its own team, though.
Some things are a mystery. Why does Guam have its own Olympic team? Why does Quebec have its own immigration policy? Why did The Ukraine have its own seat at the UN all through the cold war?
I suspect they looked at the origin of the players in the MLB and realized PR by itself could field quite a good team. That means more of the best players can participate. Anyway, given the number and passion of Puetro Ricans in the US, it’s a savvy marketing move. And PR has its own Olympic and (soccer) World Cup teams, too.
The MLBPA of course will piss and moan. Their players already enjoy a ridiculously long off-season compared to their soccer-playing counterparts who “only†get a month or two off a year.
OK, to be fair, how many games a week do Premier League teams play? And yeah, standing around at first base vs running up and down a pitch, yadda yadda.
Frankly, I’d like to see most of the major sports have shorter seasons. Basketball isn’t over yet and it’s the first day of summer. Hockey goes on WAY too long — well, except for this year when some people would say the season was about right. (If you ask me it should end when the last ice is off the ponds in Edmonton).
Puerto Rico is not, as many people seem to think, a territory of the United States. It is legally considered a commonwealth. It is a self-governing, dependent country. This is similar to what Canada was to the UK for much of its history.
It’s not a canard, it’s more or less true. The fact that teams field international players does not mean baseball’s champion is a “world champion”.
When Arsenal win the English Premier League they are not automatically crowned champions of France as well, because they have several French players; the Red Sox, however their roster is constituted, are the champions of the US domestic league, nothing more.
I don’t know, but I would love to find out. I love baseball, in all its forms, and there’s nothing to be afraid of in a World Cup. And it’d make for one helluva fun road trip for baseball fans.
Well, that depends on how far back your history goes. Canada has been independent of Britan for 138 years; for a good part of the time prior to that parts of what are now Canada were effectively controlled by France and the Hudson’s Bay Company. So for “much” of its history the analogy isn’t true. Though it is if you confine yourself to Newfoundland.
A better analogy would be the Cayman Islands to the UK today (and there is a separate Cayman olympic team).
But the real issue for most people is what passport you get, since that is an effective and universal badge of citizenship (albeit one with caveats, since the Citzenship line in the passport can differ from what is on its cover — I used to know a guy who had a UK passport with “Stateless person” written there). And because people born in Puerto Rico get US passports (just as Cayman Islanders get UK passports), it’s reasonable to lump them in with the US for most purposes and thus the confusion is understandable.
Anyway, a better question is why do Scotland and England each get their own World Cup soccer teams?
When Arsenal win the English Premier League they are not automatically crowned champions of France as well, because they have several French players
They should be, if for no other reason that anything that is guaranteed to piss off everybody in France is intrinsically a Good Thing.
“Canada has been independent of Britain for 138 years;”
Not really. Canada nominally became independent in 1867, but wasn’t granted sovereign power until 1931. You could argue that Canada was a self-governing dependent territory in between.
I, however, would argue that Canada wasn’t self-governing in that period, and thus shouldn’t have counted as an separate country at all. Much like Puerto Rico today.
Isn’t Massachusetts a commonwealth?
This would all get really muddled if Europe had passed the new European Constitution – it would have surrendered many sovereign powers to Europe.
In that case, you could only consistently give separate acknowledgement to each European nation if you drew the line further from sovereign power, which would then allow England and Scotland and Guernsey like the World Cup does.
“Anyway, a better question is why do Scotland and England each get their own World Cup soccer teams?”
Benefits of having originated and organized the sport there before the formation of FIFA. Since there were already teams playing in seperate leagues in England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland, each with their own organizing bodies, when FIFA decided to organize all soccer in a country under one FA, an exception was added to allow the 4 FA’s of Great Britain and Northern Ireland to remain independant. Easier than fighting them on it.
This is also why the Great Britain delegation to the summer olympics does not field a soccer team. Since the IOC and FIFA have joint control of the olympic soccer competition, and all FIFA competition teams must be from the same FA, while all IOC competition teams must be from the same country, the 4 FA’s can not agree on how to organize the team. There’s been some rumors lately that they’ll figure out a way to do it, but in all honesty (based on quality) it would probably be 95% English with 1-2 Scottish players…
That may be the first time since 1966 that the word “quality” and the concept of the English national team have been in the same sentence.
I, who used to live in Seattle for the school and currently lives in France for the job, think there are two reasons Japan could say YES.
One. The Profit. On the meeting, it was decided that NPB, Japanese Baseball Organization, wont be able to take enough profit for the Series. Two, the condition of the players. As somebody pointed out, the players have had little rest after the season if the Series will go on.
I WOULD LOVE TO SEE BASEBALL WORLD SERIES.
Compete with chemically enhanced US players? Naaaah.
#20 Name a Scot who’d get into a British squad? I can think of a couple of Welsh (Giggs and perhaps Bellamy) but that’s about it.
#21, #24 Note I was talking about the (possilbe) Olympic squad when I mentioned that duer to quality it would be English with 1-2 Scots. The Olympic squad is U-23 with 3 overage exceptions. And my choice of 1-2 Scots was just based on other people’s conversations about what a combined team would look like, I don’t have nay specific players in mind.