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November 3, 2007
Diamonds for the Chinese Masses
Baseball for the Chinese masses? The State Department sending Cal Ripken to Shanghai? Yes, yes, I know something of the hallowed traditions of Japanese baseball and more recently the Taiwanese leagues. Those were begun on sandlots by boys imitating the American soldiers stationed on military bases, and they grew organically.
In the case of China, as with so much else, Chinese "interest" in the sport, of which there is extraordinarily little, is a top down affair, undoubtedly spurred on by the highest levels of sporting administration simply as a result of baseball's inclusion as an Olympic sport. Although eliminated from the 2012 Games, baseball may return in 2016. Surely, there is some long-term planning going on in the General Administration of Sport.
From the American State Department's viewpoint, what is the value in assisting a fledgling Chinese Olympic effort? Not, apparently, the expansion of commerce for sporting goods makers, whose manufacturing base has been China for many years. (Think about it, Mr. Rawlings said to his underlings, a glove for every boy in China! If it had never been said aloud, it was surely thought.)
An effort in fostering Friendship between the Great Chinese People and the Great American People? (That phrase circa 1975.) If so, the substance of our relations has not ventured far from Ping-Pong Diplomacy, but surely it has.
It looks more like a charm offensive. If media is to be believed, and I am not suggesting it should, much of the world has recently come to think very poorly of America. Baseball, strongly identified with the American, is a happy game -- a typically American pastime that might be used to get good press at a time of extraordinary need.
Baseball in China -- bizzare meeting place of the American tendency to proselytize; a State Department whose public relations operates in crisis mode; an aggresively competitive Chinese officialdom; and little boys who just want to play. I hope the kids have at least some fun while the adults make use of them for their own ends.
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