Should the ‘National Pastime’ start in its country of origin?

Jay Mariotti is mad as hell about baseball starting its season in Japan and isn’t going to take it anymore.

The Chicago Sun-Times sports columnist sees this as yet another Bud Selig marketing idea gone awry.

Selig forever will be known as The Greedy Commissioner, the car salesman who sells out integrity and tradition for fat-cat owners who aren't satisfied enough with $6 billion-plus in 2007 revenues and want to sell some T-shirts in Japan. All I know is, if baseball still wants to be embraced as the national pastime and still wants us to regard Opening Day as sacred, the season cannot open halfway around the world.

It is our sport and our holiday, not to be rented out any more than the Brits would allow the Premier League to launch in East Rutherford, N.J. Opening Day always has been a vital part of our sports romance, the raising of an emotional curtain between winter and spring, especially in places like Chicago where the winters are endless hell. …

The NFL played a real game in London last season, but never, ever would those owners launch a season anywhere but in an American stadium. Not to sound like a xenophobe, but Opening Day should not be 13 time zones away from one team's town and 16 from the other's. It's just un-American.

And, he’s probably right. Not just about this above, but the stupidity of trying to go to Europe. Since the retirement of Bert Blyleven (can we please, for doorknob’s sake, get this man his rightful spot in the Hall of Fame?) how many European players have there been in MLB? Beyond that, most Europeans probably do see baseball as bastardized cricket. And, in the UK at least, fans can watch the unbastardized version of that sport.

Unlike the NFL, which can more easily afford to play regular season games overseas, with its weekly schedule, or the NBA, which may eventually adopt David Stern’s idea of an entire division of European teams, Major League Baseball really has little to gain from this.

Japan has two established MLB-equivalent professional leagues of its own. The only marketing MLB can really do is vis-à-vis Japanese players on MLB teams, and that could be done with a postseason barnstorming tour, a la the 1920s.