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...introduced her family at the convention as a new version of the Cosbys (or the Bradys). Obama's opponents want him to look niche, like BET or Chris Rock or the NBA; his challenge is to prove that he's also attractive to the ABC and Dane Cook and MLB crowds. During the primaries, Joe Biden took flak for his dopey description of Obama as "the first mainstream African American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy." Articulate is one of those racially tinged words that sports announcers use to express surprise that a black...
...same time, NPB teams lack what might be called the "trade advantages" of their North American counterparts, namely, stadium subsidies, salary depreciation allowances and the anti-trust exemption which helps free up millions upon millions of dollars for MLB teams to spend on raiding Japan's top stars. Most MLB teams use stadiums for little or nothing, having strenuously convinced the cities they play in to build new facilities for them. By contrast The Tokyo Giants pay $250,000 a game to use the Tokyo Dome, while the Softbank Hawks pay $40 million dollars a year to use a similar...
...ratings for the Tokyo Giants, in particular, have fallen several percentage points since live MLB casts became a regular morning affair in Japan (the Giants' biggest star, Hideki Matsui, defected to the New York Yankees in 2003). But Japanese baseball is far from dead. Seasonal attendance has actually increased in the past three years (by 5%), thanks to the establishment of interleague play. The NPB has also managed to hold on to a core fan base (though some would argue that it is the core fans who have stuck by the NPB). In 2007, the Japan Series drew over twice...
...Japanese athlete, going to the MLB, once regarded as a traitorous act, has become the thing to do, thanks to the exploits of Ichiro, Matsui and Dice-K. Observers estimate that conservatively there are at least three or four dozen more players good enough to make the jump. And most of them are ready to go. They are attracted to the higher pay and prestige of the major leagues and eager to be free of the rigid Japanese style discipline and the excessive practice of the Japanese system. As expatriate American pitcher Jeremy Powell, who plays for the Softbank Hawks...
...what's next for the American invaders? Might the MLB be contemplating a Japan division to field teams against its National League and American League in the U.S.? The rumors to that effect exist because the Yomiuri Shimbun, the huge newspaper that also owns its own baseball team, was a major sponsor of the Boston-Oakland series and was responsible for the timing of the games to coincide with the local leagues' opening week - which the NPB found so obnoxious. Could Japan be further drawn into the American baseball empire? Well, maybe not. Says Masaki Nagino, planning director...