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Can This Reputation Be Saved?

The World Series
The WBC has made the World Series
look a little bush league.

By Katie Delahaye Paine, with Special Guest Contributor Bob Cannon (see below)

My father used to say that the World Series wouldn't be a real world series until teams from Japan were allowed to play. I'd love to know what he thought about the recent World Baseball Classic results. Not only did Japan win, but us Yanks lost to Canada and Mexico. Between the doping scandals, the questions that Barry Bonds and his ilk bring to the record books, and the dominance of Japan and Cuba in the WBC, the World Series is clearly on a losing streak. Could the this be the beginning of the end for MLB and the World Series?

But what do I know? To get a more knowledgeable perspective we turn to an expert, Bob Cannon, who not only is a major baseball fan, but has actually played in Fenway Park (see below). Take it away, Bob...

Thank you, Katie. Well, first off, let's remember that the World Series was named in 1903, a good 15 years before the U.S.A. was considered a true world power. We were a more closed-off country then, so the rest of the world didn't really matter as much to us. And, of course, at that time there wasn't all that much baseball being played anywhere else. So, we figured, who's gonna be offended by our little hyperbole? "World" Series, why not? (That first Series was won by the Red Sox, and don't you forget it.)

As for the impact of recent events, well, the baseball establishment is even better at self-delusion than the Bush administration; I'm not sure they really get the idea that their reputation has been hurt. The baseball players' union (MLBPA) is unbelievably solid, so you won't hear any current players bad-mouthing any steroid users, even though most of them have witnessed Barry Bonds' back acne firsthand.

Let's look at the Series' TV ratings. When there's a good backstory, like the Red Sox' Breaking of the Curse in 2004 (a.k.a. the Greatest Story in the History of Mankind), they've run up some impressive Nielsen numbers. But last year the matchup between Chicago's "other" team and the Houston Astros put them in the C-SPAN2 neighborhood. Even the vaunted Subway Series of 2000 reduced the Fall Classic to a regional New York tournament, with ratings to match.

That said, the World Series will probably keep its reputation because the majority of the best players in the world -- regardless of their country -- still want to play here, mostly because of the big bucks. Duh.

But there are whispers around the major league world that the WBC tournament exposed the deep flaws in the American style of play, i.e. wait for the home run and find pitchers who can throw 95 mph. The Cubans, Koreans, and especially the Japanese play a style that's more familiar to baby boomers -- situational hitting, crafty pitching, an emphasis on speed and defense -- all in the name of stealing a run here and there.

However, thanks to ESPN's "SportsCenter," major leaguers now know that the ticket to big bucks is to hit homers so you get your mug on the evening's highlights. And until that changes, MLB will keep touting itself as the Greatest Baseball on Earth (*in the non-communist Western hemisphere). Better get used to using those asterisks -- Barry "Chemical" Bonds is only 48 homers away from Hank Aaron.

Bob Cannon's current official title is Senior Reporter for Entertainment Weekly. He was editor-in-chief of the late lamented New Country magazine. He says, "Despite my currently living in the heart of Yankee country, I've been a diehard Red Sox fan since the Impossible Dream of 1967. And here's a photo of me to prove it, batting at Red Sox fantasy camp in 2005."

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