Japan’s NPB: A Rival Major League?
Recently Japanese star Tomoyuki Sugano decided to forego any offers from Major League Baseball and return to Japan to play for the Yomiuri Giants of Nippon Professional Baseball’s Central League.
It was a move that left plenty scratching their head. A key reason behind the head-scratching is that most are not aware of how big baseball has become in places like Japan and South Korea. To the common fan, those leagues don’t matter and it makes zero sense why anyone would turn down an MLB offer to take less money from another league.
There are reasons beyond money for why Sugano made the decision he did. As valid as those concerns are, what I want to focus on here is that the Sugano situation spells out clear as day that what MLB truly needs is a rival.
In turning down signing in the States, Saguano certainly passed up some money, but he still signed a deal with the Giants that will pay him $40 million over the next four years. That financial security placed Sugano is a special position where he could reject the MLB and still know he was going to be set for life.
It was the ability to have an honest competing offer that allowed Sugano to say no to the MLB clubs that wanted his services. For the first time in a long time MLB owners had to watch as a player they coveted said “thanks, but no thanks” and took money elsewhere so he could play the game of baseball on his own terms. This isn’t the first time this has happened in MLB history, lest we forget the lessons learned from the American Association, Federal League, Players’ League, and even in the initial battle between the American and National Leagues.
The reason that MLB doesn’t want any actual competition to their title as the only major league organization around is that they know that competition would help the players and hurt their profits.
When the AL started up and established itself as a major league they did so in large part by offering better contracts to NL players and luring them away from the older, more established league. Players feasted on this scenario every time it presented itself. Whenever some other league was able to situate itself as a rival to the established MLB entity of the time competition ensued.
That sort of competition is what players and fans need right now. The ability of MLB to dictate the terms of the game of baseball on the major league level needs to be challenged. Players need to be able to look at the salary suppression that MLB owners have been engaging in for years now and say, “That’s a pretty low offer, League X offered me this much so unless you can match I will be playing there next year.” You know, capitalism unfettered by MLB’s American anti-trust exemption.
The power that would remove from ownership can’t be properly expressed. The direct impact it would have on MLB’s business practices and the willingness of team owners to put a winning/entertaining product on the field can’t be understated. Instead of hoarding every possible penny they can and trotting out teams designed to save money they would either have to pay up or see their teams suffer serious financial repercussions.
The idea of a rival organization/league forming and challenging MLB’s stranglehold on the major league baseball market seems like a pipe dream. The thing is, it can be accomplished. That doesn’t mean it will happen, but it could happen. We need more players able to make the decision that Tomoyuki Sugano did, and then Sung-bum Na after him. For a healthy and fair major league baseball market, we need some organization/league to step up to the plate and try to establish themselves as a major league independent of MLB. That, or we need to nationalize the game and I don’t think most of you are quite ready for that discussion just yet.
