Expanding on Bud Selig’s global championship proposal

Posted on January 8, 2010 by Sandlapper Spike

Bud Selig and his Japanese counterpart, Ryozo Kato, apparently met in Milwaukee recently to discuss a proposal for an annual global championship between the U.S. World Series winner and the Japan Series titlist (skimpy details in this column and the AP article linked within it).  Personally, I think Selig needs to expand on this idea.  Here is a suggestion for a format that would truly determine the “world champion” of baseball:

First, there needs to be a poll system of some kind.  There would be two main polls.  In one of them, writers, presumably from around the world, would vote on which champions of each world league were worthy of playing in the title series.  In the other “human” poll, managers from some of the elite clubs (and even a few from the less-elite ranks) would vote.  Computer polls could also be used, in case further obfuscation was required.

The champions that finished 1st and 2nd in the poll system would qualify to play in the global championship.  In addition, the weeks leading up to the global series would be filled with series between other continental champions.  I would call these various series the “Baseball Championship Series”, just so everyone could grasp their tremendous importance.  The 1 vs. 2 matchup would be known as the Baseball Championship Series Global Championship.

You could have automatic qualifiers from North America, the Caribbean, Asia, South America, Australia, and Europe.  Another couple of slots would be filled by at-large selections; for example, an extra European club would presumably get to play in the Baseball Championship Series almost every year, because of the political importance of that continent.

I suppose it is possible that every now and then a lesser continent would produce a team worthy of competing in the Baseball Championship Series.  It is unlikely such a club would really be at the same level as those continental champions already guaranteed berths, of course, and certainly a place in the title series would be completely out of the question.

However, to satisfy potential rabble-rousers (all great things attract critics), a set of conditions could be met by a prospective qualifier to allow a team from a smaller continent (like, for example, Africa) to compete in the Baseball Championship Series.  It must be emphasized that such a club would never be in a position to qualify for the Global Championship, because it would obviously not be deserving.  The system would be designed to ensure such an injustice never happened.

There is no doubt in my mind that the system described above would be a major success for all significant parties.  There would almost never be a situation where more than two clubs would be in line for play in the global championship, and the other qualifying clubs would get to bask in the glow of the championship event by playing in much-anticipated series leading up to the final.

It’s a wonder such a setup hasn’t been tried for other sporting events, particularly the NFL playoffs and the NCAA Division I men’s basketball tournament, each of which desperately needs a substantial change in the way it determines its respective champions.

All in all, it’s a fantastic idea.

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Will baseball return to the Olympics in 2016?

Posted on November 21, 2008 by Sandlapper Spike

Last week a delegation from the International Baseball Federation arrived in Lausanne, Switzerland, to present its case for returning the sport of baseball to the Olympic program.  Members of the delegation included IBAF president and longtime sports executive Harvey Schiller and current Detroit Tiger Curtis Granderson.

(Brief digression:  I am duty-bound to note that Harvey Schiller is a 1960 graduate of The Citadel.)

For those unaware, the Beijing games marked the end of baseball and softball as Olympic sports, due to a vote held by the International Olympic Committee in 2005.  They became the first two sports tossed out of the Olympics since 1936, when polo was eliminated.  As to why they were given the heave-ho, there wasn’t really an official reason (at least, not a legitimate one), but the actual reasons were:

1)  For baseball, the IOC was annoyed that MLB wouldn’t stop its season and let its best players compete in the Games.  The honchos that run the Olympics are big on the Games being the #1 goal/event for all sports (with the notable exception of soccer).  That clearly wasn’t the case for baseball (and that is still the case, obviously).

2)  There was also some grumbling about drugs, but that was probably a side issue.  Dick Pound would claim otherwise, but then, he probably thinks baseball is played by savages.

3)  Softball’s problem was that it was perceived as being dominated by Americans, and why give the U.S. an easy gold medal?  “Gimme” golds are reserved for select Euro countries and China.  (There was talk that the modern pentathlon might go, too, but since U.S. athletes have generally not fared well in that event, it was probably never in serious danger of being excised from the Games.)  Of course, the gold medal in softball in Beijing was actually won by the Japanese, which I guess qualifies as irony.

There are two slots open for the 2016 Games, and baseball and softball are competing with several other sports, including rugby, golf, squash, and roller sports (which apparently would not include roller hockey or skateboarding; not including roller hockey would be a dealbreaker for me if I had a vote).

I don’t think baseball is getting back in the Olympics until MLB suspends its season to let its stars participate, and that’s never going to happen.  What is particularly irksome is that soccer, another sport that doesn’t send most of its best players to the Olympics, is allowed to remain in the Games, as essentially an under-23 tournament (with three spots reserved for “overage” players).  I think baseball would be best served by a similar policy.  However, the IOC isn’t going to go for that.  I’m not sure the IBAF is interested in that idea, either.

It’s too bad, really.  I do think softball has a chance to be reinstated, now that the IOC has seen that the U.S. isn’t a mortal lock for the gold every time out.

I’ll close by noting that another sport is trying to bust into the Olympics in 2012.  It may not have a shot to make it to the London games, but perhaps 2016 isn’t out of reach.  I’m talking, of course, about Pole Dancing.

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Tricky Sports Logos

Posted on October 23, 2008 by Sandlapper Spike

There was an article in The Wall Street Journal today about the guy who designed the logo for Major League Baseball.  It’s a classic logo that has been imitated by a number of other sports, including the NBA and the PGA Tour.

One of the things so appealing about the MLB logo is that it’s possible to view the batter as being either right-handed or left-handed, depending on your point of view.  This got me thinking about other logos that have more going on than might immediately meet the eye.

Consider, for example, the old Milwaukee Brewers “ball-glove” logo:

A lot of people don’t realize that this isn’t just a ball-glove picture, but “secreted” within the logo are the letters “m” and “b”, for Milwaukee Brewers.  The Montreal Expos had a similar idea:

This creation actually contains an “e”, “M”, and “b” (standing for Expos de Montréal Baseball).  To say most people didn’t catch on to that would probably be an understatement.

Here is the logo for another franchise that moved.  Here it’s a little easier to see the “H” and “W”, representing the Hartford Whalers:

Finally, this one is a visual trick of a different kind.  No logo ever confused me more than the old Atlanta Hawks logo, which to me seemed to be something out of a Pac-Man arcade game:

I “get” it now, but I still think it’s a terrible logo.

There are a lot more “hidden meaning” sports logos out there, of course.  (The Big 10 logo with the hidden “11” comes to mind.)

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