By Robert Whiting (2017)
The 4th World Baseball Classic is now upon us. The first and second rounds will be held in Tokyo at the Tokyo Dome, and MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred will be attending. And despite reports that MLB is considering dropping the WBC, indications from the Commissioner’s office are that it will continue for the foreseeable future.
Compared to Japan, where the WBC draws high ratings, WBC games are not popular in the US. In fact, ESPN stopped televising the games in the US, while the league’s own channel, MLB TV, airs the games primarily as filler. US fans are accustomed to associating March with spring training as they look ahead to the season opener. The WBC is little more than a new wrinkle that pops up every few years, an added dimension to spring training that conjures up passing interest. Some major league stars play in the tournament, some sit it out. MLB teams and their fans get nervous that their top players will be hurt going all-out during a month that’s normally reserved for gradually getting into playing shape. Yankees star first baseman Mark Teixeira, for example, hurt his wrist in the 2009 WBC and never fully recovered.
However, the global tournament carries some value for MLB, which controls WBC global rights, as an international marketing campaign. And the international market is growing.
Japan’s extra-inning victory over Chinese Taipei in the previous WBC in 2013 was the most-watched TV program in Taiwan’s history, with a 15.5 rating. When Japan moved on to a win over the Netherlands, the telecast drew over 40% of the country’s television households, a higher percentage than the 2012 Olympics.
Global growth is sporadic, of course, in part because some of the countries where baseball passions run high, as in Cuba, lack strong economies. Big MLB sponsors like Gillette and Pepsi have activated advertising campaigns around the WBC in Puerto Rico, a U.S. territory. But baseball is still struggling to catch hold in Brazil and China, where growing middle classes are an MLB target.
Still, the WBC has come a long way since its inception back in 2006, especially in Japan.
I clearly remember the first WBC, with opening rounds in Tokyo. It had great difficulty getting off the ground in Japan in the beginning. There was jealousy on the part of Nippon Professional Baseball because MLB, which had invented the WBC, was controlling a venture a great part of which would take place on Japanese soil. The two parties eventually agreed on the basic principle of MLB in charge, but then feuded over revenue splits. When that issue was settled, the NPB Players’ Association almost boycotted the event, because Japanese players felt it was unworthy of their time and interfered with their training.
Officials from the Yomiuri Shimbun, which had agreed to sponsor the Asian round, prevailed upon Sadaharu Oh, former Yomiuri Giants star, to manage the team and appeal to the players. “I’ll do it for the welfare of Japanese baseball,” said Oh, “for the future, for 50 years from now.”
However, players resisted at the outset. Ichiro Suzuki, for one, was not impressed. “What difference does it make if some old guy is going to manage the team?” he reportedly told acquaintances. “That doesn’t make it a real event.” But Oh was persistent. He persuaded Ichiro to play, if only to benefit the Japanese game in the future, and other big stars followed.
As the opening of the tourney approached, cultural nationalism reared its head. Ichiro, team leader, suddenly became a jingoist. “I don’t want to just win,” said Ichiro. “I want the people watching to feel that our play is beautiful and extraordinary. I want to win in a way that will make the opposition think they won’t be able to beat us for another 30 years.” Obviously he was talking about South Korea, because China and Taiwan offered almost no opposition at all.
The ROK squad took offense and went all out to win in the opening round. Ichiro, who took a pitched fastball in the hip during the first ROK-Japan game as punishment by the Korea squad for his insouciance, termed the defeat a ‘disgrace,’ telling American reporters later, “The pressure of trying to beat South Korea is something totally different than trying to beat the United States.” A second straight defeat to Korea in the second round in California caused Ichiro to curse in English, his lips forming an expletive beginning with “F” easily understandable to millions watching on TV.
American-Japanese friction also came bubbling to the surface in that same second round. When American home plate umpire Bob Davidson reversed a call in which Tsuyoshi Nishioka was clearly safe at home running in from a sacrifice fly, enabling the US to win, anger at the Americans back home in Japan was so intense it reminded one of the trade conflicts of the 1980s. The Sankei Sports opined that “pressure from the American public played a role in the bad call.” Rakuten Eagles manager Senichi Hoshino said on TV, “It’s pathetic. They should use umpires from third-party countries.” Even the government of Japan chimed in. Said then-Environment Minister Yuriko Koike, “I thought the United States was a country of fairness in baseball. But it seems it is not so. I am very disappointed.” It was ironic, given that MLB officials had offered to use umpires from Asia in the second round, but were met with resistance from the NPB Commissioner’s office, which objected to the presence of Chinese and Korean umpires on the grounds they would be biased.
Summing up, one could say that the first WBC tourney was not exactly a shining tribute to cross-cultural understanding or a great triumph of diplomacy. It was, however, good for Japan in other ways.
Japan went on to win that tourney, defeating Cuba in the final at San Diego’s Petco Park, watched by one out of every five Japanese people—60 million in all—making it one of the most-watched sporting events in the history of Japan. It was an ironic ending for a team that had not wanted to participate in the first place, and also a landmark victory because the world got to see just how good Japanese baseball really was.
The American players were out of shape, out of practice, and, at times, performed like amateurs. The effect of a laid-back American approach to spring camp, which started a month after Japanese training began and lasted only a few hours a day compared to the dawn-to-dusk regimens of most NPB squads, was clear. Said Team USA’s Buck Martinez, “You saw the value of their practice regimen, taking 100 ground balls a day, 200 swings a day—much more than we do. It’s what we should be doing.”
Japan went on to win the next WBC title as well, in 2009 (with the Dominican Republic taking the third WBC in 2013), while the US team, which continued to view any game played in March as only an exhibition and largely ignored Martinez’s suggestions, had yet to make it to the finals.
So, now, what should we expect from the 2017 WBC? More of the same, I would say. Japan will certainly do well, perhaps win the 2017 WBC in strong competition with the Dominican Republic, while the US will continue to embarrass itself. It is quite clear that when you play in March, Japan is the team to beat.
NOTE: Team USA won its first WBC crown in 2017, defeating Puerto Rico in the final—this time they were in shape. The entire WBC drew 1,086,720 fans in attendance, surpassing the previous high of 885,212 by 23 percent. The championship game at Dodger Stadium on March 22 drew 51,565, the second-highest game attendance in the history of the event. In terms of ratings, 3.1 million viewers in the United States watched the championship game, the largest U.S. TV audience in the history of the event (by contrast, the Houston Astros’ 2017 World Series win over the Dodgers averaged 18.9 million viewers over seven games, and the five-game 2018 World Series between the Red Sox and Dodgers averaged roughly 14 million).
UPDATE: Interest in the 2023 WBC increased further. Japan’s 3-2 victory over the USA, in which Shohei Ohtani struck out Mike Trout for the final out in a dramatic encounter, drew 5.2 million viewers across the FS1 cable network, Fox Deportes and Fox Sports’ streaming platforms—the most-watched WBC game telecast ever on American TV, up 69% from the 2017 final. Average attendance across 2023 WBC games stood at 25,275, also a record, up 24% from 2017’s average of 20,402. Pool B, hosted at the Tokyo Dome, broke the record for most fans of any round in tournament history, with 361,976. The showdown between Japan and Korea on March 10th at the Tokyo Dome was the most-watched game in WBC history in any country, with a 44.4 rating.
Tokyo Junkie 