Major League Baseball begins project in China

BEIJING -- When Jim Small eyes China, he dreams big: seventh-inning stretches in Shanghai, home runs in Harbin, scouts scouring Suzhou for the new Sammy Sosa. In short, baseball -- pure, old-fashioned American baseball -- barnstorming its way across the land of Mao.

Small is Major League Baseball's vice president of international market development. And there's no international market larger than China, where it's estimated the number of school-age athletes is larger than the entire population of the United States.

On Sunday, MLB and its fledgling counterpart, the China Baseball Association, announced they would formally team up to promote baseball in every corner of the communist nation ahead of the 2008 Beijing Olympics. It's a decision both romantic and lucrative.

"Baseball was born in America. Now it belongs to the world," Small said Sunday. "But if baseball is truly to be considered a global sport, it needs to be played in some key countries -- and China is at the top of that list."

Now, professional and collegiate coaches will stream into China to work with young prospects. Top Chinese coaches will travel to America for stints with major-league clubs. Chinese umpires will receive training. Youth development programs -- including possibly the famed Pitch, Hit and Run that so many American youngsters have competed in -- will flourish.

Most significantly, MLB will start scouting in China, finding the country's top players and grooming them for big-league play. No details were given.

While Japanese have reached stardom in America, a Chinese has never played in the major leagues even though more than half of today's big-league players were born outside the United States. The only Chinese in the system, Wang Chao, plays for Seattle's farm system.

"We want to develop stars. Baseball in China could use its own Yao Ming," said Shen Wei, secretary-general of the China Baseball Association.

Though America's national pastime has a sporadic history in China, this increased attention by the major leagues reflects the country's dramatic opening to the world -- economically and socially -- since Mao Zedong's death in 1976. Mao, who scorned all things imperialist, would have considered baseball a bourgeois distraction.