Major League Baseball is apparently considering sending the Yankees and Red Sox to Japan next year:
The Yankees and the Boston Red Sox extended their rivalry all the way to Asia in November, when the Red Sox beat the Yankees in their bid to sign the star Japanese pitcher Daisuke Matsuzaka. Next March, Japanese baseball fans could experience the rivalry up close.
As reported by The New York Post yesterday, Major League Baseball is in preliminary negotiations with several teams, including the Yankees and the Red Sox, about playing exhibition games in China next March and opening the regular season in Japan, according to several individuals briefed on the negotiations.
Although other teams are involved, baseball would prefer the Yankees and the Red Sox, who have the league’s most contentious rivalry and would conceivably feature four Japanese players, to open the season in Asia. The Los Angeles Dodgers and the San Diego Padres are believed to be two other choices.
“We are talking to a number of different clubs about a number of different possibilities,” Patrick Courtney, a spokesman for Major League Baseball, said in a telephone interview.
Courtney said that the plans were in the preliminary stages and he did not want to comment further.
Dodgers vs. Padres ? No, if MLB wants Japanese baseball fans to see what an American baseball rivalry is really like, there’s really only choice.
