The Globalization of Baseball

Podcast Transcript

Today, baseball is played at the highest levels on nearly every continent. Stars come from the United States, Japan, the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Korea, and more.

Yet for most of its history, the sport lacked a true international championship featuring the world’s best players.

That changed in the 21st century with the creation of the World Baseball Classic, a tournament designed to crown the best baseball nation on Earth.

Learn more about how baseball became a global game on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

In a previous episode, I covered the origins of baseball. While its precise origins remain shrouded in legend, two developments are certain: baseball captured America’s imagination and then spread worldwide, becoming one of the most popular sports globally.

Today, professional baseball in the United States is a virtual United Nations of stars from across the globe. Over the last 22 years, 10 MVP awards in the major leagues have gone to foreign-born players, including Shohei Ohtani, who has won four times.

Perhaps no country has embraced the game of baseball more than the country of Japan.

In 1872, Horace Wilson, an American school teacher, introduced the sport to Tokyo’s Kasei Academy. He taught the game to his students as part of physical education, and it quickly spread through Japanese schools before becoming the country’s most popular sport.

Japan’s desire during the Meiji Restoration to westernize and modernize helped spread the game. Within just a few years, teams quickly formed across Japan, and the country developed a passion for the pastime.

A defining chapter unfolded when an American All-Star barnstorming tour, headlined by Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, and Jimmie Foxx, swept into Japan in 1934. The exhibition tour pitted the Americans against the best Japanese players.

Baseball fever swept the nation as millions flocked to see the legendary American players and to find out whether Japanese All-Stars could measure up. The Japanese team was known as the “Greater Japan Tokyo Baseball Club.”

The visit by American legends spurred the creation of the Japanese Baseball League in 1936. As it transitioned to a larger league amid significant expansion, the JBL evolved into Nippon Professional Baseball, in 1950.

After World War II, professional baseball in Japan came to represent the nation’s recovery.

From 1945 to 1952, Japan was occupied by the United States and administered by General Douglas MacArthur. MacArthur was a former player and lifelong baseball fan, and baseball was a centerpiece of Japan’s restoration during his tenure.

He believed the sport’s values were essential to rebuilding the Japanese national spirit after such a difficult period.

The Nippon Professional Baseball league, comprising 12 teams, became the second-best baseball league in the world, producing a steady stream of legendary baseball talent that rivaled Major League Baseball.

The rise of Shohei Ohtani is only the most recent example. The remarkable two-way talent has revolutionized Major League Baseball, leaving many wondering whether he isn’t the most talented player in baseball history.

A series of extraordinary players forged Ohtani’s path, including all-time home run king Sadaharu Oh, whose 868 home runs eclipses the MLB record of 762 held by Barry Bonds.

Baseball fans undoubtedly remember the hit king Ichiro Suzuki, who amassed 4,300 hits across his career in Japan and Major League Baseball, displaying an exceptional eye at the plate that rivals anyone who has ever played the game.

Scholars often point to the shift in the samurai mindset towards discipline, learning, and skill as part of the rapid rise of Japanese baseball. Baseball arrived at the end of the samurai age in the 1870s. Baseball served as a bridge, allowing the samurai ethos to transition into the new Japanese national pastime.

Today, Japan is the world’s top-ranked national team according to the World Baseball Softball Confederation rankings. The country has won 3 World Baseball Classic titles, the most of any nation.

Baseball’s meteoric rise in Japan has provided the framework for its diffusion throughout Asia.

Building on this momentum, the sport has developed a passionate following in modern Taiwan. Taiwan was a Japanese colony in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and Japanese settlements on the island brought baseball.

Initially met with skepticism, baseball quickly gained popularity among Taiwanese, mirroring its rapid adoption in Japan.

After the Japanese departure in 1949 and the Kuomintang’s retreat to the Island following the Communist Revolution that same year, the arriving Chinese were initially suspicious of a Japanese sport held in such esteem among the Taiwanese.

Baseball soon won over the Chinese, and Taiwan thrived, with its Little League winning 15 Little League World Series from 1969 to 1991. The national program, competing as Chinese Taipei, currently ranks second in the WBSC world rankings.

In Taiwan, baseball and politics intersect, creating a unique naming challenge. Due to its history and pressure from Mainland China, Taiwan cannot compete under the name Taiwan name and instead uses the name Chinese Taipei as a compromise to participate in international events.

The future of baseball in Taiwan is bright, despite a late start: a professional league was formed in 1990 and has propelled the sport to even greater heights.

The love and passion for baseball in East Asia are not limited to Japan and Taipei, and can also be found in South Korea. South Korea has its own professional league and has consistently done well in the World Baseball Classic.

As popular as baseball has become in East Asia, it is even bigger in parts of Latin America. Just as Japan served as the gateway through which baseball established itself in Asia, so too did Cuba serve as the gateway through which baseball established itself in Latin America.

19th-century Cuba was one of the last bastions of the Spanish empire in the Americas. Most Cubans suffered under Spanish colonial rule, which turned the island into a center of sugar production.

Many of the elite who held the social and economic capital in Spanish Cuba sent their children to the United States for their schooling.

These children returned to Cuba with baseball. American sailors also played baseball in Cuban harbors, where it caught on with Cuban workers. From there, the game spread to Cuban workers who toiled in the fields and worked in the refineries.

By 1869, the sport enjoyed wild popularity, but the Spanish colonial governor banned it following Cuba’s first attempt at independence during the Ten Years’ War. Making it illegal only made the game more popular.

Baseball became an act of rebellion against Spanish rule. Cuban teams began to form not only out of love of the sport but also as an act of nationalism against the Spanish occupation of Cuba, which continued until Cuba became independent in 1902.

The Cuban professional league, the Cuban League, was founded in 1878 and remained a fixture in Cuba until the Castro regime abolished it in 1961.

Despite the lack of a professional league, Cuban players could showcase their abilities in the Cuban National Series. The government established the Cuban National Series in the wake of the ban on professional baseball.

This league showcases some of the best baseball players in the hemisphere and has served as a springboard to playing on the Cuban national team. Playing on the Cuban national team is the highest honor for a Cuban baseball player.

Building on this legacy, the Cuban national team was the best national team in the world for nearly 40 years. The Cuban Lions of the Caribbean won an unbelievable 151 games in a row between 1987 and 1991. The Cuban team was made up of professional-calibre players who were largely playing against amateurs.

When baseball became an Olympic sport in 1992, the Cubans reached the gold medal game in the first five Olympics. They won 3 gold medals and 2 silver medals.

Sadly, Cuban players, despite their greatness, are prohibited from leaving Cuba to play in the Major Leagues. The government has traditionally used family left behind as leverage against players who defect from Cuba to play in America. They enforce this by denying them the ability to visit their families.

Despite that leverage, Cuba has lost some extraordinary talent over the years, including Hall of Famers Tony Pérez, Luis Tiant, Minnie Miñoso, and Tony Oliva.

This list doesn’t include the talent that stayed on the island, including Omar Linares, who observers believe would have been a shoo-in for stardom in MLB.

Cuba’s baseball brilliance illuminated the rest of Latin America in the 19th century, as Cuban migrants brought the game to the sugar-producing Dominican Republic and the criollo-friendly haven of Caracas, Venezuela.

As was the case in Cuba, the nationalist movement in the Dominican Republic strengthened when baseball became part of it.

The United States occupied the Dominican Republic from 1916 to 1924. In protest of American involvement, Dominican teams formed specifically to beat the US Marines stationed on the island, and they usually did.

Under the American-friendly dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo, the government used the people’s passion for baseball to galvanize the nation and his control over it. He used his influence to merge the two greatest teams on the island into a super team, named after himself, the Trujillo Dragons

He used his wealth and influence to stack the Trujillo Dragons with the top players in America who were not in the major leagues, including Negro League players Satchel Paige and Josh Gibson.

The Dominican Republic grabbed onto baseball with both hands and has not let go. Its baseball legacy is cemented by having produced more legendary baseball players than any nation outside the United States.

The list of Dominican greats in Major League Baseball is too long to list, but it includes the likes of Juan Marichal, Vladimir Guerrero Sr, Albert Pujols, Pedro Martinez, and Juan Soto.

Baseball grew in influence in Venezuela as American oil interests arrived, bringing greater access to the game. The nation gained a passion for the sport after a Venezuelan amateur team traveled to Havana in 1941 and shocked the world by winning the Amateur World Series on Cuban soil.

The enthusiasm that followed led to the establishment of the Venezuelan Professional Baseball League in 1945.

Venezuela, along with the Dominican Republic and Mexico, became a haven for a new type of league, one that is crucial for the development of American baseball: the winter league.

Each winter, some of the best players in the world converge on small Latin American towns and play with some of the elite prospects in the American minor league system to hone their skills and prepare for the upcoming MLB season.

While the winter leagues benefit MLB, it has also catalyzed nations like Venezuela to grow and expand their passion for the sport. Venezuela has become a fixture in global tournaments like the WBC. It has produced a cadre of outstanding MLB players, including Miguel Cabrera, Luis Aparicio, Johan Santana, and Jose Altuve.

With so many countries playing baseball, the desire for an international championship arose. Something akin to the FIFA World Cup for soccer.

The World Baseball Classic was created in the early 2000s by Major League Baseball and the World Baseball Softball Confederation. After baseball was dropped from the Olympic Games following 2008, organizers wanted a premier international tournament featuring the world’s best professional players.

The first World Baseball Classic was held in 2006, with national teams composed largely of professional players competing for a global championship.

The tournament couldn’t be called the Baseball World Cup because that name was already used by an existing international competition organized by the International Baseball Federation. To avoid confusion with that long-running event, they picked a different name.

Baseball has become a truly global game, while it may never eclipse the global pull of soccer, tournaments like the World Baseball Classic are a vivid reminder of the sport’s extraordinary global talent and the power of teams outside the United States.