players switching leagues

Check out any of the many "Doom and Gloom" and/or "Exitus" threads in the News and/or Nichi-Bei forums. There's very little to add to those many comments.

hahahah. i feel your pain with that project.

hey anthony,
could you send me some information on:
how America and Japan exhibit similaraties and differences in the use of the sport of baseball, in a cultural and economic influence?

-------------------------------------------------------
benjamin GONIA

p.s.
email:
benji3playboy@hotmail.com

same here, i feel your pain! i'm also writing a paper about the declining popularity of yakyuu in japan. it's only a 5 page paper (hey i'm not a grad student yet!!!) so i had to focus my reasons on the exodus of talent to the major leagues and the incoming J-League, with their commercial, yet competitive campaign to capture Japanese interest.... (not to mention this years World Cup)...
now that i look at it, i should have narrowed the topic more and pursued a bit more detail.

that way of wording it is very dramatic. i've heard that the Ce-League and Pa-League may be reduced to Minor League systems -- because, in all honesty, it seems to be any baseball players dreams to pursue a career in the Major leagues once they establish themselves in Japan. I think it's important that they don't skip the first step to ensure national integrity. Also, don't you think that the continually rising caliber improves the reputation of Japan in a sense?

I think the people that run the Japanese League need to give the players what they want. They need to match the offers US teams are giving the players or offer them something better. If they keep losing their star players attendance and popularity will continue to go down

Actually, attendance is up this year and Nippon Ham drew 50,000 at Tokyo Dome (though the actual draw was
probably Hayato Terahara) this past weekend in one game. The Golden Week crowds were pretty good and even
Orix is experiencing an upsurge. And I think attendance
will be better than last season as long as Hanshin can stay in the pennant race with the Giants (the two are tied). But if the air goes out of the Hanshin balloon rather quickly (and they are only about .500 since that seven game winning streak at the beginning), then you
could see things get a little depressing crowd-wise.

One thing that would help is if the Japanese teams would take a page out of the Mariners marketing playbook in terms of how it uses its players to advertise the ballclub. The commercials the M's have done are actually quite good. With the calcified mindset in Japanese baseball, though, it probably won't happen.