American Championships End At Their Borders

Recently, when perusing Bleacher Report, I came across some articles deriding the current World Baseball Championship. Since some of the games are being played in my home city of Toronto, Canada, I decided to read them. The articles wondered what the purpose of the games were, given that there was so little American interest in them.

To me, the articles told more about Americans than they did about the games.  One of the pleasures, I have had since joining Bleacher Report is a chance to write and read articles for/from people in different locations.

Once I began getting comments and feedback from people, I set up a database using Microsoft Access so that I could keep track of who is who, where they are from, and what they like.

Writing is a way of learning about others and yourself. Whenever you write, even though you may be striving for objectivity and neutrality, you expose something of yourself in your article.  Sometimes it is something we never knew about ourselves. 

A few times I've re-read an article or a comment I have left and felt I have come on too strong in striving to score a point. Then I wonder why I was so anxious to prove myself and search for the underlying reason why I chose my subject and why it meant so much to me.

Similarly, when I read articles written by others, it gives me a chance to learn about who they are, where they are from and what subjects are important to them.

Bleacher Report gives me a chance to learn a lot more about Americans and in conjunction with my encounters with them from the past, I have found that I can generally lump Americans into two groups, one extremely aware and well informed, and the other very ignorant. 

When I responded to the above articles, I found myself writing a mini-article of my own. 

There have been articles in the Toronto newspapers talking about the potential development of the World Baseball Championship and opining that it could become something significant but it will not until Americans start taking it more seriously.

In my comments, I pointed out that this was a characteristic of American sports that have been around since the beginning of the 20th Century; except for the Olympics, Americans care little for sports beyond their own borders, particularly at the professional level.

Baseball is a good example. The Championship is called the "World Series" even though there is only one team outside the United States. Similarly, the NFL and NBA call the winning team the "world champion" as if they were actually competing against international competition.

When he was the colour commentator for the Toronto Blue Jays, Tony Kubek would sometimes mention Japanese baseball stars and talk wistfully about a world series between the champion American team and the champion from Japan. But no competition has ever come about.

In the current baseball championships, many top American players declined to play for their country. Contrast that with hockey where almost every professional player wants to play for their country when the opportunity arises.

Bobby Orr played his last great hockey in the 1976 Canada Cup, a decision that probably helped to end his NHL career. The NFL set up NFL Europe to try and popularize the game abroad but there was no attempt to create foreign franchises that competed for the Super Bowl.

Their attitude to "foreigners" was better expressed by the recent Buffalo-Miami game in Toronto. Tickets were $200 causing even the most mindless fans who want an NFL franchise at any cost to stop and wonder what they were getting for their money.

The NFL made it clear that watching this game in person was going to be a "privilege". To put things in perspective, there were tickets for the Minnesota-Philadelphia playoff game on sale for $40.

I have not done much research in this field, but so far I can only find three sports that boast a true professional world champion: soccer, cricket, and curling.

Curling is a sport that does not get much publicity in America. But it is big in Canada in both the men's and women's competition and is quietly growing around the world. More countries play it than ever before. 

In contrast to major American sports, the Canadian winners do not call themselves world champions but are sent to compete at a true world tournament that includes the American representative, several European countries, and recently sometimes Japan and China.

The closest a major North American professional sports championship is coming to international status, is hockey, a sport that is struggling to find popularity in the United States. 

Canadians used to hold similar views to the United States about "foreigners" playing "their" sport.  They derided the world championship and only sent an amateur team to compete in it.

The 1972 Canada-USSR series changed everything. The realization that the Soviet team competed equally with Canada, and the excitement created by the tournament made Canadians want to see more international competition at a high level.

It was only a matter of time before Europeans began to appear in the NHL. Today, players like Sundin, Ovechkin, and Jagr are as much heroes to North Americans as Gretzky and Lemieux are heroes in Europe.

There is talk that one day a European division of the NHL will be created.

International competitions like the occasional World Cup and at the women's and junior levels are popular in Canada.  And the NHL champion is the NHL champion or at best the "world professional champion", not some blanket term for a non-existent championship.

Part of the problem in America is the limited media. Frequently, I have chatted with dedicated American hockey fans who want more and better television coverage and had to explain that hockey's unpopularity and low ratings in America is their true enemy.

I've had to explain the difference between watching games in America where only a few games of the entire Stanley Cup are shown and in Canada where fans can watch at least one game a night during the tournament.

Most Canadians live near the American border and have had access to American television since the 1950's. Canadian cable and satellite television companies offer generous packages of American cable channels.

In contrast, so far as I know, American companies offer nothing from abroad.  The best an American hockey fan can do if he/she is lucky to live near the border is get the Saturday night CBC hockey broadcast in a sports bar. 

It is the same old chiche I've had to repeat in many of my comments to American readers: We can see you but you can't see us.

So except for the Olympics, Americans get a myopic view of international sports and it colours the articles they write and the opinions they give.

Perhaps what is needed in American sports is the equivalent to what happened in popular music and cars.  In 1964, the Beatles, followed by other British groups took over the American charts and in the 1970's, Japanese car imports waged a successful battle against American gas-guzzlers.

The World Baseball Championship could lead to bigger and better things. But until Americans and their players change their attitude to international sports, it won't be.