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with the rise of globalization, the significance of international boundaries in economic transactions has declined. From almost the beginning of its history, baseball has overcome barriers. Not only has baseball helped immigrants assimilate into American society, but it has also spread to the rest of the world, becoming a truly international game.
More than fifty thousand Giants fans spent a Saturday evening in September at the ballpark, hoping to see history in the making. In the third inning, the man they came to see stepped up to the plate. Wearing the familiar white Giants uniform with black-and-orange trim, the batter, only one home run away from setting a new record, calmly worked the count full. Then, raising his right leg in his trademark swing, he connected on the next pitch, a sinker that he lined into the right-field bleachers. Fifty thousand fans exploded into applause as the scoreboard boasted of the achievement.
The batter, however, was not Barry Bonds or even Willie Mays, and the ballpark was not AT&T Park, Candlestick Park, or the Polo Grounds. Instead, the game took place in 1977 at Korakuen Stadium in Tokyo, where first baseman Sadaharu Oh of the Yomiuri Giants (often called the Tokyo Giants by Americans) had just eclipsed Hank Aaron’s all-time record of 755 home runs. Before he retired in 1980, Oh would hit 868 home runs in his career—106 more than Barry Bonds, 113 more than Hank Aaron, and 154 more than Babe Ruth—to become the world’s greatest home run champion. Today, however, few Americans recognize—or even know about—Oh’s accomplishment.
When Oh surpassed Aaron in 1977, globalization had already started to lessen the importance of international borders in economic transactions. By the 1970s, baseball, too, had become an international game, but during its early history it had been recognized as an institution that was uniquely American. In the early twentieth century, while industrialization was underway in the United States, Albert Spalding argued that because of its egalitarian nature, baseball represented American ideals. Even as late as the 1950s, during the height of the Cold War, French-born historian and philosopher Jacques Barzun said that “[w]hoever wants to learn the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball.”
Baseball has helped define American culture, even infiltrating the language. “Hitting a home run” has come to mean an unqualified success, while “striking out” means failing and “throwing a curve ball” means trickery. A bizarre idea might come “out of left field.” Baseball metaphors, such as “getting to first base,” are even used by teenagers to describe their success in sexual situations.
Sadaharu Oh hit more home runs than any other human being, belting 868 homers in his 22 seasons with Japan’s Yomiuri Giants. National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. Cooperstown, N.Y.
Because baseball had become so intertwined with America, immigrants used it as an assimilation tool; by playing baseball, they were adopting an American identity. A generation or two after various immigrant groups arrived in the United States, their children or grandchildren started to appear in the major leagues. Irish immigrants started to arrive in the United States in the 1840s and 1850s, and in the 1880s Mike “King” Kelly of the White Stockings, James “Tip” O’Neill of the Browns, and Hugh Duffy of the Beaneaters were among the stars of the game. Italian immigrants arrived in America in large numbers in the 1880s and 1890s; by the twenties and thirties, major league teams included players like Tony Lazzeri of the Yankees, Ernie Lombardi of the Reds, and the three DiMaggio brothers—Joe of the Yankees, Vince of the Pirates, and Dominic of the Red Sox. Polish immigrants began coming to America after 1900, and by the fifties and sixties, Ted Kluszewski of the Reds, Bill Mazeroski of the Pirates, and Carl Yastrzemski of the Red Sox were playing in the big leagues.
Perhaps the most ironic example of baseball as assimilation can be found among the Japanese Americans living in internment camps during World War II, where inmates often played baseball to pass the time. The Japanese Americans playing baseball in internment camps were expressing their American character while being denied their American identity by the government.
During the first half of the twentieth century, other ethnic groups were denied a place in the major leagues, the most notable example being African Americans. But the arrival of Jackie Robinson and Larry Doby not only paved the way for black players but also opened the door for Latino and Hispanic ballplayers, who, confronting the same type of discrimination faced by African Americans, found a place on major league rosters in the fifties and sixties. When Hall of Fame right fielder Roberto Clemente, who played eighteen years for the Pittsburgh Pirates, died in a plane crash in 1972 while on a humanitarian mission to bring relief supplies to earthquake victims in Nicaragua, he became a national martyr in his native Puerto Rico. Other noteworthy Latino players from the sixties included pitcher Juan Marichal of the Giants and the three Alou brothers—Felipe, Matty, and Jesus. For a very brief period of time in 1963, all three Alou brothers were even on the same team—the San Francisco Giants—and, in three games, played together in the same outfield.
Since the 1990s a number of Asian players have entered the major leagues, including Chan Ho Park of the Dodgers, who is from South Korea, and Ichiro Suzuki of the Mariners and Hideki Matsui of the Yankees, both of whom are from Japan. And when South African native Gift Ngoepe of the Pirates took over second base in the fourth inning of a game against the Cubs on April 26, 2017, baseball could boast that players born on six different continents have appeared in major league games. The arrival of Latino and Asian players demonstrated a change in baseball. These players were not children of immigrants assimilating through baseball; they were skilled players in other countries (or, in the case of Puerto Rico, a US commonwealth with a distinct culture that maintains its own sports organizations for international competition) who were recruited by major league teams to play in the United States. Globalization had arrived in baseball.
In 1972, future Hall of Famer Roberto Clemente became the eleventh major league player to collect 3,000 hits, a feat he accomplished in his last at-bat of the season. Three months later, Clemente, a national hero in his homeland of Puerto Rico, was killed in a plane crash while on a mercy mission to bring relief supplies to earthquake victims in Nicaragua. National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. Cooperstown, N.Y.
Although baseball, a descendant of the English game of rounders, first matured in the United States, it quickly spread to other places. Albert Spalding’s 1888–1889 world tour and the around-the-world trip undertaken by the Philadelphia Athletics and New York Giants in 1913–1914 failed in their deliberate attempts to spread baseball throughout the globe, but through spontaneous actions, baseball did take hold in foreign places. Missionaries teaching in Japan in the 1860s taught baseball to their students. From these students, the game spread in Japan and eventually to Korea, Taiwan, and even Brazil. Cuban students who studied in New York City introduced the game in their homeland after they returned home. Baseball often spread without American influence, as Cubans also brought the game to Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic.
In Canada baseball seemed to develop spontaneously with its emergence in the United States. In the 1870s the Tecumseh Base Ball Club, a team from London, Ontario, applied to join the National League. The league rejected the application because London did not have the league’s minimum population of seventy-five thousand. London’s chances were probably also hurt by its location in Canada, as the National League did admit Syracuse and Troy, New York, in 1879 and Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1880—all of which had populations of fewer than seventy-five thousand people. In 1877 the International Association, baseball’s first minor league, was formed, with five clubs in the United States and two in Canada—the Tecumseh club of London and a second club in Guelph, Ontario.
Other North American teams outside the United States played in the minor leagues in the twentieth century. The International League, one of baseball’s top minor leagues, has truly been international, as, for more than fifty years, the league boasted two teams in Canada—the Toronto Maple Leafs, which joined the circuit in 1896, and the Montreal Royals, which joined the following year. Almost a half century later, Jackie Robinson would play for the Royals on his way to the major league Dodgers. In the middle of the century, the league also moved into the Caribbean when it admitted the Havana Sugar Kings, a team in Cuba, in 1954. The Havana club would become the top farm team of the radical-sounding Cincinnati Reds, but the Cuban Revolution forced the league to move the team to Jersey City, New Jersey, in the middle of the 1960 season. Given that Cuban leader Fidel Castro was a fanatic about baseball, one wonders whether an American League expansion team for Havana in 1961 might have changed US-Cuban relations in the sixties. In 1961 the International League returned to the islands when its Miami Marlins franchise moved to San Juan, Puerto Rico. The Pacific Coast League also took on an international look in 1956, when the Oakland Oaks moved to Vancouver, British Columbia.
The National League expanded into Canada in 1969 with the creation of the Montreal Expos. Eight years later, the American League placed another expansion team—the Toronto Blue Jays—in Canada. In the 1980s Vancouver was one of the eleven North American cities that unsuccessfully sought a National League expansion team, and with the Expos’ 2005 move to Washington, DC, the Blue Jays (winners of two World Series) remained the only major league team based outside of the United States.
Still, high-level professional leagues exist in other countries. In 1936, two years after a barnstorming American baseball team featuring Babe Ruth toured Japan, the professional Japan Baseball League was established in the Tokyo area. The Japanese government banned baseball and other Western institutions during World War II, but the occupying American army reinstated the sport after the war ended. Interest in baseball increased in 1949 when Lefty O’Doul, the manager of the minor league San Francisco Seals, brought his team to Japan to play a series of games against Japanese teams. Japanese baseball promoters set up the Central League in 1949 and a second circuit, the Pacific League, in 1950. A postseason championship, the Japan Series, between the annual champions of each league, began in 1950. When Sadaharu Oh surpassed Hank Aaron’s home run record in 1977, many Americans dismissed it as a weak home run in an undersized park against minor league–caliber pitching. Since 1995, however, more than fifty Japanese stars have proven their ability on major league teams. The arrival of Japanese ballplayers in the United States has increased Japanese interest in American baseball.
South of the border, interest in baseball grew following visits to Mexico by the Chicago White Sox in 1906 and Cuban teams in 1917 and 1918. In 1925 sportswriter Alejandro Aguilar Reyes, who had spent a year in the United States observing American baseball, founded the Mexican League, a semiprofessional circuit. In the 1930s Jorge Pasquel, a wealthy Veracruz cigar manufacturer and customs broker, converted the organization into a full-fledged professional league. Pasquel entered the league by buying the Azules de Veracruz (the Veracruz Blues) in 1938, and his ownership of Mexico City’s Delta Park, the premier baseball stadium in the country, widened his influence in the league. Plagued by internal disagreement, the league split into two circuits in 1940. With Pasquel’s backing, the league that included the Azules survived, while the other circuit collapsed. Because of his strong political connections—he had been married to the daughter of one Mexican president and was a close friend to a second—Pasquel became the league president in 1946. Almost from the start, Pasquel began pouring his resources into the league, luring Negro league stars—including future Hall of Famers Martin Dihigo, Satchel Paige, and Ray Dandridge—to play in Mexico. Some scholars have argued that the success of the integrated Mexican League convinced many white Americans that baseball’s color barrier was unnecessary. Pasquel implemented a plan to transform the Mexican League into a major league, signing about a dozen players from the big leagues, including pitchers Sal Maglie of the Giants and Max Lanier of the Cardinals, as well as Dodgers catcher Mickey Owens. Perceiving the defections as a serious threat to the major leagues, Commissioner Happy Chandler announced that any player who broke the reserve clause to play in Mexico would face a five-year ban from the major leagues. When former Giants catcher Danny Gardella, who had jumped to the Mexican League in 1946 for more than double the salary the Giants had offered, petitioned Chandler for reinstatement, Chandler rejected the request. Gardella sued. At first, a federal judge, citing the 1922 Federal Baseball Club case, dismissed the lawsuit, but an appellate court ordered a full trial. The prospect of going to court—and perhaps losing baseball’s antitrust exemption—convinced Chandler to lift the suspensions.
After losing most of its former major leaguers, the Mexican League teetered near bankruptcy in the early 1950s. In 1955, shortly after Pasquel died in a plane crash, league officials reorganized the circuit and secured its admission into the National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues (NAPBL), the organization of minor leagues under the authority of the commissioner of Major League Baseball. Initially, the Mexican League entered the minor league system as a Double-A league, but in 1966 the league upgraded to Triple-A, the same level as the International League and the Pacific Coast League. Today, the Mexican League is the only circuit in Minor League Baseball, as the NAPBL is now known, located outside of the United States.
In 1979, Caribbean baseball promoters attempted to create another high-level minor league, this one almost completely outside of the United States. The Inter-American League comprised six teams—two in Venezuela and one each in the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Panama, and the United States. The lone American team, the Miami Amigos, was managed by Davey Johnson, who in 1986 would lead the New York Mets to the World Series championship. The league’s backers had hoped to obtain Triple-A minor league status, but financial difficulties caused by the expensive travel costs forced the Inter-American league to fold after only three months.
In the twenty-first century, more than a quarter of the players on major league rosters are foreign born. Major leaguers from other countries included former Red Sox star David Ortiz, often called “Big Papi,” who was born in the Dominican Republic. Today, Dominicans make up the largest number of foreign-born players, with about ten percent of all current major leaguers coming from that country. Boston Red Sox Photo Archive
In the mid-twentieth century, winter leagues—which start play in November, after the World Series is over—formed in Latin America. Today these leagues operate in Mexico, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, and Cuba. Many winter leagues offer the highest caliber of play in their country and provide an opportunity for local athletes to play baseball. Today, major leaguers from Latin America often play on winter league clubs in their home countries, either to hone their skills in the off-season or to display their talents before their compatriots. In February, following the winter league season and prior to the start of spring training for North American clubs, the champions of the Latin American winter leagues meet annually in a round-robin Caribbean Series.
In most sports, the highest level of international competition can be found in the Olympics; baseball, however, was never a stalwart of the Olympic Games. Although not a medal event, an Olympic exhibition baseball game was first staged at the 1904 Games in St. Louis, the first Olympics held on US soil. Exhibition games were played at other Olympics as well, including the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, the same games in which African American track star Jesse Owens embarrassed Adolf Hitler by defeating German athletes in track and field events. In Berlin, a crowd estimated at around 90,000 watched an exhibition game played between two American teams. In 1956, 114,000 people in Melbourne watched an Australian baseball team play an American team in an exhibition game.
Countries hosting Olympic Games often include demonstration sports that have special cultural value to the country. While not official medal events, demonstration games include a tournament in which teams from a number of countries compete. When the Olympics were held in Los Angeles in 1984, the United States chose baseball as one of its demonstration sports. Boasting many future major leaguers—including Will Clark, Barry Larkin, Mark McGwire, and B. J. Surhoff—some have suggested that the 1984 US Olympic team was among the best baseball lineups ever assembled. Topps Chewing Gum even included cards featuring US Olympians in its 1984 baseball card set. In baseball, however, sometimes the best team does not win; the US team lost the gold medal to Japan. Four years later, when the Olympics were held in Seoul, the South Korean Olympic Committee also added baseball, a sport that had been played in Korea for over eighty years, as a demonstration sport. This time the US team won the gold medal in the baseball competition.
Baseball and its sister sport, women’s softball, became official medal sports in the 1992 Olympic Games in Barcelona. There, Cuba became the first country to win an official Olympic gold medal in baseball; the US team did not even medal. Four years later, at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, the team from the United States won the bronze medal, while Cuba again won the gold. In the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, Australia, future Twins first baseman Doug Mientkiewicz’s home run over South Korea gave the United States its only official Olympic gold medal in baseball. Four years later, at the 2004 Olympics in Athens, the United States did not medal, while Cuba again won the gold. In 2008 in Beijing, the United States settled for the bronze medal, while South Korea won the gold medal.
In 2005 the International Olympic Committee (IOC) voted to eliminate baseball and softball from the Olympic Games, starting in 2012 with the games in London. The two sports were replaced by golf and rugby. The IOC claimed that it was removing baseball because Major League Baseball would not interrupt its season to allow big-league players to compete in the games. Some critics, however, have suggested that the elimination of baseball and softball reflected an anti-American sentiment on the committee following the United States’ 2003 invasion of Iraq. In 2016, however, the IOC had a change of heart, voting to restore baseball as an Olympic sport starting in 2020.
In response to the removal of baseball from the Olympics, Major League Baseball and the International Baseball Federation established its own international baseball competition. Based on the World Cup soccer tournament, the World Baseball Classic began in 2006 as a competition between sixteen countries. Initially held every three years, the tournament was scheduled for late March, before the major league season starts, to allow major league players to represent their home countries in the competition. Starting in 2013, the World Baseball Classic was rescheduled to take place every four years. Japan won the gold medal in the 2006 and 2009 tournaments, while the team from the Dominican Republic won the gold in 2013. The United States did not qualify for a medal in the first three World Baseball Classic tournaments, but in 2017 Team USA won the gold medal.
In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, baseball was truly an American game. But today, players on major league rosters come from all over the world. And as the United States’ record in the Olympics and the World Baseball Classic demonstrates, American athletes no longer dominate the sport. Baseball has become a world game.