The international relations of baseball

I have an essay in today’s edition of Newsday about the international relations of baseball — in particular, what can be gleaned from the International Olympics Committee’s decision to drop baseball from its roster of sports and Major League Baseball’s decision to set up the World Baseball Classic. The key paragraph: In international-relations terms, baseball’s ...

By , a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and co-host of the Space the Nation podcast.

I have an essay in today's edition of Newsday about the international relations of baseball -- in particular, what can be gleaned from the International Olympics Committee's decision to drop baseball from its roster of sports and Major League Baseball's decision to set up the World Baseball Classic. The key paragraph:

I have an essay in today’s edition of Newsday about the international relations of baseball — in particular, what can be gleaned from the International Olympics Committee’s decision to drop baseball from its roster of sports and Major League Baseball’s decision to set up the World Baseball Classic. The key paragraph:

In international-relations terms, baseball’s exit from the Olympics would appear to symbolize the decline of America’s “soft power” – a concept developed by Harvard professor and former assistant secretary of defense Joseph Nye to characterize a country’s cultural appeal to the rest of the world. But before the Bush administration gets blamed for the decline of baseball, we should consider the possibility that the Olympic Games actually give America’s greatest game a worse deal than the Classic.

Go check it out. My favorite part is the tagline: “Daniel W. Drezner is assistant professor of political science at the University of Chicago and a lifelong fan of the Boston Red Sox.” Some background links: click here for one example of corruption in the International Olympics Committee. Here’s a link to Gary Sheffield’s comments to the New York Daily News; and here for evidence on the number of national baseball federations. I should point out one sloppy construction in the piece. The article says, “the National Hockey League allowed its players to participate in the Olympics, and they trashed their rooms after they lost their last game.” That charge should be limited to the American NHL players; my apologies to any and all Canadians.

Daniel W. Drezner is a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and co-host of the Space the Nation podcast. Twitter: @dandrezner

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