Olympic baseball "no slam dunk"

Gabe Lacques of the LA Daily News is exactly right:

... although [Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud] Selig's tenure has been marked by an increased flow of revenue streams running into the billions (just call it a post-strike survival mechanism), the one area tougher for baseball to cash in on is the global market.

It's no coincidence the NBA's worldwide popularity soared in the decade following Dream Team I, when Michael Jordan became a global icon and Charles Barkley provided the ultimate Ugly American moment by chest-bumping a helpless Angolan, proving there's no such thing as bad publicity.

The NFL can poke under its sofa cushions for spare change and get a developmental league running in Europe. If it's nothing more than a curiosity, no big deal. That league swims in profit.

But baseball, which has force-fed regular season games to Japan and Mexico, has encountered logistical issues cashing in on the global village of sport.

His assessment of the proposed World Cup is also correct:

... it's arrogant for MLB to take the reigns of a global competition, mostly for the sake of its own growth and glory. Japan has voiced concerns about a tournament run not by an international federation, but rather by MLB, one of several obstacles it must scale.

Go read the whole thing