BLC principal John Landsberg began his career as a sportswriter at The Plain Dealer in Cleveland. In July 2005, he began writing a new sports column for Kansas City Sports and Fitness. Look for it at selected bars, restaurants and libraries throughout the Kansas City area. An archive of his previous columns can be accessed at: http://www.kcsportspaper.com/columnists.asp?sort1=columnist#landsberg
AMERICA DOES NOT MONOPOLIZE SPORTS By John Landsberg, May 2007
Several years ago while sitting in a Political Science class my professor discussed the term “ethnocentrism.”Basically, she explained it meant that different folks from around the world often feel that their culture is superior to all others.
We in the U.S. often feel that our culture is better than others.On the other hand, many Japanese, Chinese, Indians, etc., feel the same way about their individual cultures.
When it comes to sports, we have always believed the world revolves around our teams and athletes.Our professional baseball season ends with a “World Series” where we crown one of our teams as the best in the world. The problem is we never actually played any teams outside North America.We just knew our players were the best in the world.Baseball was OUR game.It was our own little “world.” What’s interesting today is that we are finding out that there are players from all over the entire world who are playing professional baseball (and basketball, golf, etc.) in the U.S. who are as good and even better than our players.It is a humbling experience. This trend made me think back years ago when I first heard of a Japanese baseball player named Sadaharu Oh.He was often referred to as the “Babe Ruth of Japan.” At the time most of us thought it was it was funny that some player in a foreign country playing in an inferior baseball league was being compared to OUR Babe Ruth.Oh was a little guy compared to Ruth, Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle.We just knew he couldn’t really compete with our guys. But, today you look around the major leagues and there are Japanese players not just playing, but many are considered bonafide stars.It makes you think that maybe our sports ethnocentrism led us to believe that we had a lock on all the world’s great ballplayers. Barry Bonds will likely break Hank Aaron’s home run record this season of 755, but he will never come close to Oh’s mark of 868 career home runs in the Japanese major leagues. Oh led the league in home runs for 15 different seasons during his career with the Yomiuri Giants (1959-80) and his total made him the worldwide career home run leader. In fact, for 19 consecutive years, Oh belted 30 or more homers. Maybe Oh would not have been a big home run hitter in our Major Leagues.Or maybe today we would be talking about hitters trying to break his home run record in our major leagues. Of course, we’ll never really know one way or another.But at least today we have a chance to see the best players in the world playing in our major leagues today.We are getting closer to a real “World Series.”
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