Hours away from First Pitch

There is way too much fuss being made over the fact that Opening Day is taking place in Japan about a week before the rest of the league gets to play games that count. Too much fuss is being made over the fact that the games start at 6AM Eastern. Too much fuss is being made about it being an affair exclusively for the Japanese people and not at all for us Honest American Fans.

Let's get this out of the way: it's not xenophobia, it's pure stereotypical Americentric ignorance. Americans expect the world to cater to us, so when an American institution caters to another people, it's borderline sacrilegious. I've heard and read comments along the lines of "MLB doesn't even care if Americans watch" and "this game isn't for Americans" spoken in anger. Here's a newsflash: it's true.

These three games aren't about America at all. These three games are about helping expand the game of baseball and the institution of Major League Baseball (and, to a lesser degree, the Red Sox and Athletics) to an absolutely massive foreign market. MLB has done an outstanding job in recent years of figuring out new ways to market itself, a welcome change from years past when it's inclination was to anti-market itself (a tendency still embarrassingly on display from time to time, witness the Mitchell Report) in an apparent attempt to earn pity. This manifests itself in things like playing games in Japan, mlb.tv, and the phenomenal enhancements to the mlb website.

It tends to be difficult to see the forest when you're obsessing over the fact that this particular tree is really annoying you, but globalization is good for baseball. Increased revenues are good for baseball, particularly when they come from overseas and are shared more evenly with teams than other forms of revenue. We all should enjoy the fact that we can turn on our TV while we're getting ready for school or work and be able to watch a baseball game. I know I will.