This is a story that shouldn't be happening
- For the record, LA Times story:
- "We've got to tell these children, 'You're not going to grow to be a basketball player. You're too short. Try baseball,' " he said.
- Americans have been trying to sell the Chinese on the beauty of baseball for decades. In 1986, former Dodgers owner Peter O'Malley oversaw the building of a baseball stadium in the coastal city of Tianjin, 75 miles southeast of Beijing. Former Dodger Jim Lefebvre was sent to China in 2003 to manage the Chinese national team, which enjoyed its first success in 2005, beating South Korea at the Asian qualifier for the World Cup of Baseball in Japan.
- "Baseball is a tough sell here," said Zhou Zuyi, a sportswriter from Shanghai, who says he has covered many games from empty stands. "Imagine nobody watching while the best of China's players are out there. . . . People in this country just don't have an understanding of baseball."
- But the situation has been complicated in China by an unfortunate stigma it acquired as a counterrevolutionary sport.
- baseball was banned entirely when the Cultural Revolution started in the 1960s. Mao himself is said to have derided it as an "evil Western influence.""
- From LA Times article, "Baseball Seeks the Yao Factor," by Barbara Demick, 1/24/08
Labels: Baseball in Communist China, MLB in Communist China
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