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To: chessplayer
This is an ancient ploy.

The Japs, for example, have always objected to "The WORLD Series," as if the copycat little weasels with their face-saving "adjustable strike zone" and other Zen baseball concepts, have a prayer of competition at this level. The Hagerstown Suns, the Dunedin Blue Jays, The Scranton Phillies, The Toledo Mud Hens, all of'em could wipe the floor with Jap baseball. Now the Cubans, and some others, might just possibly cause a ML American team some problems on some given day.

But in American football, who TF else is there? The Dusseldorf Bearcats? The Palermo Hitmen? I really would like to see Piers' "A" level results. I think they are probably down there with Barry's SAT scores. Is there anyway to get this fey Sloane Ranger deported, maybe to the Falklands?

52 posted on 02/04/2013 8:02:57 AM PST by Kenny Bunk (The Obama Absolution Molecule: Teflon binds with Melanin = No-Fault Marxism.)
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To: Kenny Bunk
The Hagerstown Suns, the Dunedin Blue Jays, The Scranton Phillies, The Toledo Mud Hens, all of'em could wipe the floor with Jap baseball.

You might want to drop your racial epithet and look at what has really happened. The first Japanese player to make the major leagues was Masanori Murakami in the early 1960s as a pitcher for the San Francisco Giants. It was more than a quarter century before Hideo Nomo of the Los Angeles Dodgers did so again.

At the time, it widely thought that Japanese teams played a little better than our AAA level, but not at our MLB level. It was also thought that Japanese pitching might be able to compete at the MLB level, but not position players. The encounters between exhibition all-star teams which Americans won about 80% of the time seemed to bear this out.

Then Ichiro Suzuki, a superstar on the Kobe Blue Wave, signed a major league contract with the Seattle Mariners and proceeded to produce superstar numbers in the American League. Not long afterward, Cecil Fielder, who was considered a washed-up MLB player, put up such good numbers in Japan that the Detroit Tigers brought him home and he proceeded to hit over 50 home runs (honestly and without steroids) in the very next season.

Look at things today and there are few major league rosters without at least one Japanese player on them, not all of whom are of star quality either on our side of the Pacific or theirs. The skill gap has closed considerably since Hideo Nomo (who was a good, but not an outstanding pitcher in Japan) pitched here in the late 1980s.

Bottom line is that the AAA teams which you mentioned might be competitive with the lower ranked Japanese pro teams, but certainly would not "wipe the floor" with them, particularly those at the top of the standings.

66 posted on 02/04/2013 10:06:50 AM PST by Vigilanteman (Obama: Fake black man. Fake Messiah. Fake American. How many fakes can you fit in one Zer0?)
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