| The study traces and assesses Major League Baseball's (MLB's) development into an international business marketing its mythical appeal and managing its player, umpire, fan, and domestic and foreign government constituents. Culminating in an evaluation of the inaugural World Baseball Classic, it shows MLB's uneven progress from an insensitive domestic monopoly to a globally competitive business. Using the thesis of "soft power," it supplements analysis of cultural, business, economic, and popular research with primary source interviews. The work follows a generally chronological progression that synthesizes four interrelated aspects of MLB: as a sport, a domestic business, a neocolonialist, and an international business. In so doing, it assesses MLB's management of its ongoing mythical attraction as the "national pastime" in the face of labor and market challenges within the burgeoning entertainment industry.; Joseph S. Nye, Jr., differentiates the "soft power" of cultural and ideological persuasion from the "hard power" of economic and military force in international relations. For its first century, MLB played economic "hard ball" as a domestic monopoly and an imperialist colonizer. Its labor neocolonialism started with class-based exploitation of immigrant sons, progressed to rural athletes in the "farm system," then, with continuing racial bias, to usurpation of the Negro League players in a "split-labor" scheme, and finally to economic "bottom fishing" for even cheaper talent among Caribbean youth.; As a result of resistance and counter influence from its "colonies" at home and abroad as well as greater market competition, MLB now plays more "soft ball" as an international business. It has tightened its controls of team business practices, accepted local variations, and marketed its diversity at home and abroad. MLB now operates more collaboratively with its unions, local markets and governments, and foreign leagues and governments.; MLB designed the World Baseball Classic, initially comprising 16 nations, to expand market attraction of the game on six continents and to reinforce the fan appeal of racial and national player diversity. More than any other initiative, it required collaboration among varied and often conflicting domestic and foreign constituents. Therefore, it serves as a learning experience for further implementation of an international strategy. |
