MLB goes to China!!!

The executives at Major League baseball have given advice to the players as they go to China to hawk the virtues of playing baseball American style. Let them see it. Buy it. Experience it. Invest in it.

The when a team or 10 are placed in China and we have a 13 hour differential, then things get tough.

Here is an article written by some writers at Yahoo sports:

So the Padres traveling contingent of 120 leaned back in their seats and were given several choices on how to pass the time. Every passenger was handed a Digecor XT festooned with the MLB China Series logo, enabling movie buffs to watch “Michael Clayton,” “Juno,” “3:10 to Yuma” and “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford,” in succession, or to watch a single “Family Guy” episode 26 times.

Some folks struck up card games, others wandered around making small talk. Food and drink were plentiful and anyone could lay out for a snooze because with 400 seats for 120 passengers, this flight was no sardine can.

The Dodgers had a problem with their charter company and weren’t able to fly out of Vero Beach, Fla, until Wednesday, robbing them of a day of sight-seeing. There was grumbling from players and staff, although Dodgers staff historian Mark Langill had the house spin down pat, saying, “Neil Armstrong didn’t hang around for sightseeing when he landed on the moon.”

Padres players are leery of the foreign food, but are looking forward to dabbling their toes into Chinese culture, bright lights, loud music and all. Ballplayers are notorious night owls.

Team brass has done its best to nip any shenanigans in the bud, primarily by trying to frighten the players into submission. Postings in the Padres spring training clubhouse included the following warnings:

Syphilis is on the rise in China. … Infection rates have increased six-fold over the past few years.

The not-so-subtle message: Keep your pants on.

The World Health Organization estimates that diseases triggered by indoor and outdoor air pollution kill 65,000 Chinese citizens each year, and polluted drinking water kills another 95,000.

The perhaps unintended message: Hold your breath and stick to drinking beer.

MLB issued an advisory that described Beijing scams designed to part Western visitors from their money. One recent ploy is for someone posing as a student to solicit a Westerner’s assistance in practicing their English over a cup of tea. The tea ends up costing 100 times what it should, and tea house enforcers intimidate the mark into paying.

Of course, a ballplayer falling into this trap would have gotten a measure of revenge by teaching the Chinese scammers nonsensical baseball jargon like, “Hum, babe,” and “That hook was filthy.”