Tonight's Chinese national games gold medal baseball game (6:00 pm Beijing time, Guangdong vs. People's Liberation Army) will probably be the most important baseball game in China for some time to come. Now that it's officially out of the Olympics, baseball will likely be dropped from the next national games and generally given a lot less attention by China's sports authorities. The Olympic baseball stadium is gone from Beijing's Wukesong sports center, and it would be a surprise to see the national professional league return next year. While baseball's China denouement (for now, at least) plays out quietly in Jinan, a sport that just joined the Olympic club has its own athletes in town (Coincidence? Probably not) for a rugby sevens tournament. By the
2013 National Games in Liaoning, those rugby players will be competing for medals and spots on the 2016 Olympic team.
But Americans have not given up on bringing their national pastime to the masses here—Major League Baseball recently launched a new site for the mainland (
MLB.cn), opened a
baseball academy in Wuxi, and still has staff in Beijing.
Guangdong's Liu Kai, no longer a Yankee minor leaguer, pitched his team to a victory over Beijing Saturday.
Seattle Mariners scouts made the trip to Jinan to keep an eye on a Beijing catcher and first baseman who are in the Mariners system. And Huang Jianhua (Kenny Huang)--the Chinese-born, U.S.-based businessman who's working on team ownership deals in both the NBA (Cleveland Cavaliers) and the
CBA (Jilin Northeast Tigers)--supposedly has all kinds of plans for baseball in China.
In the meantime, though, there are a whole bunch of out-of-work guys who can swing a bat or throw a baseball 60 or 70 miles per hour--maybe some of the heavy hitters can get absorbed by the now-Olympic-happy Chinese golf world somehow, a la Happy Gilmore.
And the women who play softball are even worse off, as no one's likely to come to the rescue soon with a softball academy or professional league.
Tags:
baseball,
Liu Kai,
National games,
rugby,
刘凯
