| sperry |
2007-10-27 02:51 PM |
What's with the retardation in this thread? Oh.. it's Kevin and Dean again. :P
It's the "World Series" because back when it was created, it unified every major baseball league in the world in a single championship to determine who was the best in the world. At the time of course there was just the American and National leagues, in the world. So the name, while hyperbolic in order to drum up interest, was accurate.
From Wikipedia:
Quote:
The title of this championship may be confusing to some readers from countries where baseball is not a major sport (or even where it is), because the "World" Series is confined to the champions of two baseball leagues that currently operate only in the United States and Canada.
The explanation is that when the term "World's Championship Series" was first used in the 1880s, baseball at a highly-skilled level was almost exclusively confined to North America, especially the United States. Thus it was understood that the winner of the major league championship was the best baseball team in the world. The title of this event was soon shortened to "World's Series" and later to "World Series".
The United States continued to be the only professional baseball country until some decades into the 20th Century. The first Japanese professional baseball efforts began in 1920. The current Japanese leagues date from the late 1940s. Various Latin American leagues also formed around that time.
By the 1990s, baseball was played at a highly skilled level in many countries, resulting in a strong international flavor to the Series, as many of the best players from the Pacific Rim, Latin America, the Caribbean, and elsewhere now play on Major League rosters. The notable exception is Cuban nationals, due to the political situation between the USA and Cuba (despite that barrier, over the years a number of Cuba's finest ballplayers have defected to the United States to play in the American professional leagues). Players from the Japanese Leagues also have a more difficult time coming to the Major Leagues because they must first play 10 years in Japan before becoming free agents. Reaching the high-income Major Leagues tends to be the goal of many of the best players around the world.
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And what's up with every baseball thread on the internet always turning into a "let's bash baseball" rant. News flash, baseball fans know that baseball's not that big of a sport anymore... you idiots aren't letting us in on some secret. It's pretty f'ing rude to come into threads about baseball just to rant and rave about not liking the sport when there's a relevant conversation going on that you obviously don't care to contribute to. It's not like we go into your threads about the world championship of underwater gay blow-job racing and talk shit about your favorite sport. |
