We're with the Rock-Throwers and Car-Torchers on this one.

A couple weeks back we were made aware by the sporting media that the Boston Red Sox were in Japan so we naturally wondered what they were doing there. Opening Day was 2 weeks away and since neither ESPN nor any other news outlet made mention of another MLB team being there, we figured they were on some sort of good will tour and would play an exhibition game or two against one of the Japanese professional baseball teams.

Well, lo and behold, on Monday of last week, we were informed that the Boston Red Sox would be playing 2 games against the Oakland As….. two regular season games. Whiskey-Tango…? That’s right, Bud Selig and the brain trust in the MLB front offices thought it would be a grand idea to kick-off the renewal of America’s pastime a full week prior to the start of the season in the Tokyo Dome. So for nearly a week, baseball fans would look at the standings in static form… Red Sox and Athletics, 1-1… Everyone else 0-0. And to put an exclamation point on this ridiculous stunt, both teams returned to the States to finish up their exhibition schedule.

That MLB thought this would be a good idea is baffling but that’s big-league sports these days where “expansion’, “tapping into new markets” and “globalization” have become key buzz terms.

Problem is, this sort of expansion isn’t going to work because it comes at the expense of the core fans of baseball. To wit, outside of Sully, Mikey, Fitz’ and Stosh, who woke up at 3 A.M. to start drinking and cheer on their beloved Saaahx from the stools of their favorite pub in Boston, no one watched this game and no one cared.

The NFL staged their first regular season game overseas last year when the Giants played the Miami Dolphins in Wembley Stadium. We were in Vegas at the time and we wanted some action on the game. While waiting for our drink at the bar, we struck up a conversation with a flight attendant who said she always felt punch-drunk after the flight from New York to London and would never recover before hopping back on the return flight.

Hmmmm…. The Giants and the Dolphins played exactly like that and in one of the few highlights of that weekend we covered the "under" easily as neither team could get out of its own way.

That’s what the NFL was trying to sell Britons. Why would they think any other two teams (one of which was the eventual Super Bowl winner, mind you) would perform any differently?

For this global expansion to work, what obviously has to happen is that the interest and thus revenue generated overseas (minus the expenses associated with overseas expansion) must be greater than the revenue lost here as….. the leagues are freaking screwing around and playing games in front of people who don’t give a hoot instead of fans who do.

Just a gut feel but we don’t think this is going to work and the dirty little secret is neither do the leagues.

With the billions of dollars they have at their disposal this whole enterprise becomes an ego trip for the respective league commissioners and owners, a lot whose collective ego is perhaps unsurpassed by any other group of people on the planet. They want to be seen as people who created or at least attempted to create something bigger, grander, bolder, if not better.

And actual results can be dammed or just ignored because in either success or failure these people want to be known as “visionaries”… and no higher an accolade can be bestowed upon the vainglorious.

H/T: Jonesy for sending this.