Please Stop

It looks like a ton of Major League Baseball's big name stars are going to sit out the World Baseball Classic (aka the WBC or the Worthless Budselig Charade). They realize that being healthy in September is more important than playing in meaningless exhibition games that only exist to try to promote the game internationally.

Meaningless games? Yes. Baseball is trying a drummed up international competition to drum up international interest in their game. This is not a new idea. In fact, the three other major sports have all tried this, and two of them have failed. While the NFL's foreign exhibition games and NFL Europe have met a modicum of success, the NBA and NHL's participation in international events has ended up being an unmitigated disaster.

Beyond the original NBA Barcelona Dream Team back in 1992, professional league's participation in the Olympics and other formal international competitions has only succeeded in shedding a negative light on the leagues themselves. It's gotten so bad that the NHL is considering pulling out of Olympic participation as soon as the 2010 games are over.

See, what the NBA and NHL thought, and baseball still thinks, is that if you put your big stars on stage for the world to see, the world will flock to your sport. That means ticket sales, jersey sales, and (the big one) TV broadcast right sales. Why limit your market to 300 million Americans when there are five billion people in the world?

The mistake MLB is making is failing to learn what the NBA and the NHL recently figured out: Good games sell themselves. Having compelling star athletes perform on the international stage does nothing if the stars don't perform above expectations. That means crush every other country's team.

Look at the bloodbath USA Hockey is taking given their recent performance in Turin. Remember when NBA players lost to Puerto Rico? What's a paying fan supposed to think? If these players are the best in the world and play for a world title every year, why can't they beat Puerto Rico? Or Sweden? Or Latvia?

The NFL understands this. They've limited their international exposure to simply changing the venues of games already scheduled and a minor league. Their stars are not expected to perform on the international stage any differently than they would on the domestic stage.

MLB should not force this farce upon the fans and embarrassing itself in the international community with slaughter rules, pitch counts and high profile player defections. They should not jeopardize the health of key players and possibly alienate existing fan bases.

What they should do is promote a real international tournament. Get the most talented minor league players, college players and international prospects to suit up. Get the Japanese league to contribute players and capital. Same with the Korean and the Italian leagues. Make the WBC a showcase for BASEBALL, not Major League Baseball.

If the tourney were successful, the trickle down of interest generated would instead trickle up to MLB. "You loved the WBC. Now see the game played at the highest level. MLB Fever – Catch it!"

I remember after the 1980 Miracle on Ice and the 1992 Winter Olympics I wanted to see what happened to those players. Did Ray LeBlanc ever succeed at the next level? Did Jim Craig translate his brilliance to the NHL? Hell. Even the 1988 USA Olympic Baseball team got me interested in following the careers of Andy Benes, Ben McDonald, Robin Ventura, Ty Griffin (ok, what I followed of him, I hated), Scott Servais and Micky Morandini.

Stop the foolishness. Baseball sells as a game by itself. It's too bad Selig thinks he needs to drip celebrity on the world to generate interest.

Perhaps there's no worse indictment of Selig as a leader of baseball than that. He simply doesn't trust the game to be exciting to the world.

Yeah, that’s a guy you want selling your wares.