cctv9

I'm sitting here watching an interview, on CCTV 9, with Randy Levine (NY Yankess President) entitled "New York Yankees' China Dream". Randy is making the case that the New York Yankees wants to bring a team to China. He says that if they play baseball, they'll understand and once they understand it they will embrace it.

A few of his quote include
"We'd like to see baseball in China within the next few years"
"We're committed to the game"
"its all about the game"

The woman interviewing him was awesome and kept coming back with questions like

"Baseball isn't in the Olympics and was removed from the 2012 olympics in London, why are you bringing this to China?"
"Baseball might be popular in America and is played in a few select Asian countries including Korea, Taiwan, and Japan, however Soccer is played around the world. Why baseball in China and not soccer"

Of course his response to the latter was the typical American answer "Soccer isn't popular in America"

He then continued to follow it up by repeating relentlessly "its all about the game"

I call Bullshit!

This is simply about money and has nothing to do with the game. China is a potentially massive market and they believe that they can get Chinese people to pay $80/ticket (on the low end) to watch a "New York Yankees" game in China. They are simply marketing it under the guise of "we care... its about the sport"

Sports in America stopped being about "the game" at the turn of century when people realized that they can charge for the sport. Now we have "official" merchandise, on-demand channels, multi-million dollar contracts, etc. The actual love of the sport died long ago and now we are trying to export this "entertainment" under the disguise of being a "sport".

I am not trying to imply that Chinese people do not want to play or watch baseball, I'm sure that they do. What I am implying is that we (as an American society, which is the NY Yankess are apart of) shouldn't impose our sports and ideals on them. If they want the sport let them establish a team, a league and ask for a guidance from us. We shouldn't go into their country and spend millions if not billions of dollars to "educate" them about the sport in the hopes of selling them "official" merchandise, box seats, $10 beers, etc.

When I watch interviews like this it makes me a little ill. Why does the Western society continually try to seek out "profit" in place where it doesn't exist? Electing to force it to exist. I can bring up the example of DeBeers and the diamond industry, people in the west did not care about Diamonds until DeBeers spent millions to "create a market" A.W ayers did this (and they are doing it again in China)

Of course supporters of this claim the wonders of the "Free Market". The "Free Market". If people didn't want baseball or diamonds they simply wouldn't buy them, that's a "Free Market". No, its not. A free market is one in which everyone has equal access and opportunity and no one has an upper hand. In the case of DeBeers they used psychological manipulation to make people think that they needed a diamond by using manipulative marketing techniques (many of which have since been banned). They also worked with DeBeers to manipulate the global diamond market to further force the "Free Market" to swing its direction. It wasn't quite Free.

Baseball has become no different. If the New York Yankees is allowed to dump billions of dollars into China to get baseball into schools and playgrounds around China they will "create a market" by manipulating the children into accepting baseball as a national pasttime. If the motive was to simply promote a sport they wouldn't be an issue. Unfortunately the motive is purely financial.

We don't see the NY Yankees in Eastern Europe, Mongolia, or the middle of Africa promoting the sport "for the love of the game". The money isn't there so the "love of the game" isn't there.

To me its wrong.. its manipulation.