No, not on MTV. Nippon Professional Baseball and Major League Baseball are planning a playoff between their two champions, possibly by 2012. I’m heartened by this. I’m afraid the way Japanese baseball works right now, MLB raiding players will reduce NPB to minor league status. A regular series between the leagues will encourage the Japanese teams to go after players from North America. I’d love to see it get to the point where MLB and NPB are trading with each other and working under the same free agent rules. Eliminating the drafts, and making all world players free agents would help quite a bit here.
I’ve seen baseball in both Japan and the U.S. I’m not prepared to comment on the caliber of Japanese players (I just haven’t seen ENOUGH games or teams), but I do know it was an exciting brand of baseball. They guys played all out in all kinds of weather. They executed the fundamentals. They ran out every ball in play. Not so in the U.S. major leagues … which is why we go to more minor league (and college) games now than ML games.
When many nations have their own leagues, or multiples of them, there are always going to be some that are better than others. Soccer leagues throughout the world (including ours) act in many ways as feeders to the top two or three, but that doesn’t mean people don’t have a good time watching their own team play.
As long as an individual competition is meaningful, people will be entertained by it (even Americans–look at the minor leagues’ resurgence), even if it’s not itself the ultimate or best of them.