Why does MLB, like other American sports leagues exist in a fixed stratified hierarchy of leagues that preclude promotion and relegation?

Last Sunday, when the reason for this hit me right between the eyes, I wrote about it in the newsletter subscribers receive. Although I want to start with that question, I would like to push on to how major league baseball—including MLB and NPB–could be re-imagined.

Japan, in particular, is ripe for a revolution that would allow baseball to do an end run around the iron grip of the Yomiuri Giants’ dictates about what teams and leagues can do.

America’s awful truth

I didn’t start by thinking about baseball and relegation, but about how Japanese children are taught in school that their ranking among their peers is of critical importance, and how American kids in my day were taught the opposite: that we were all equal without regard to color or ethnicity, and that only character, skill and effort mattered.

I learned from an early age outside of school that opportunity and advancement were not equally portioned out regardless of background, gender or skin color, but my school did a bang-up job of convincing me that what I saw was, at worst, an aberration.

Continue reading Talkin’ bout a revolution →