An International World Series?

From the I Thought I Would Never See This in My Lifetime Department comes the following: “Major League Baseball commissioner Bud Selig has proposed that the champions of Japan and the United States play a global World Series,” reports Kyodo.

Our fellow members of the blogosphere are, to put it mildly, not too keen on the idea.

Joseph Pawlikowski on Open Thread thinks such a proposal would serve no purpose other than to demonstrate American dominance of the game:

“The unevenness of competition becomes evident when viewing which types of players move to each league. Elite Japanese players come to MLB, while fringe players move to Japan. It’s basically a one-way flow of talent,” he argues.

The Bleacher Report takes its disapproval one step further in a post entitled “The Worst Idea Since Babies Slept in Cages” and cites the already excruciatingly long season players have to endure:

“Two months of spring training followed by six months of regular season baseball succeeded by a month long postseason and an extra two weeks (at least) of a second World Series would never be accepted by the players.”

However, I am going to take a contrary position and in so doing attempt what has certainly never been done before: use the words “Bud Selig” and “good idea” in the same sentence – provided one takes a long-term view. Certainly the MLB season would somehow have to be reduced in order for this to happen. And it is more than likely that the United States would dominate any international baseball competitions in the foreseeable future.

Nonetheless, the disparity between the abilities of American players and those from other countries is narrowing as the sport’s popularity increases in places where it has never before had much of a following. Heck, we even hear that Hungary might have a prospect soon.

Besides it has always seemed slightly presumptuous to call a competition a “World Series” when it might, on rare occasions, involve a team from Canada.