Language imprecision is all around us. Your friend says she’ll arrive at the coffee shop in five minutes, but it turns out to be closer to an hour. A product you see online is advertised as “free,” but the reality is far more complex. A job application promises to take a few minutes, but it actually takes days. A university boasts of a program that’s “100% online,” but there are months of in-person requirements.
What’s to blame for all this? Can anything in recent memory be at fault when one of America’s biggest cultural institutions engaged in it shortly after the turn of the 20th century?
Consider Major League Baseball’s first World Series in 1903, where the Boston Americans matched up against the Pittsburgh Pirates. The two cities were about 500 miles apart. This doesn’t exactly constitute a global competition. So, why call it the World Series?
Fast forward nearly half a century. On October 3, 1951, the Brooklyn Dodgers made the 4-mile trip to the Polo Grounds in Manhattan to play the New York Giants. When Bobby Thomson hit the game-winning home run, it was dubbed the “shot heard round the world.” But was it really? Two teams from New York City, playing for the right to play in the World Series, yet this global moment was felt only in the United States. Were people in Shanghai interested? Milan? Buenos Aires? Probably not.
Today, we face another irony. The Toronto Blue Jays, who recently advanced to the World Series by beating the Seattle Mariners, will face the Los Angeles Dodgers in the 121st edition of the World Series. This time, we can honestly say we’re looking at a true World Series, right? After all, two countries, Canada and the U.S., are now represented.
Here’s where it gets a bit tricky. In 1992 and 1993, the Blue Jays won back-to-back World Series titles against American teams, Atlanta and Philadelphia. If we’re measuring “global” by the presence of multiple countries, those would technically be the first and second true World Series. But back then, the international blueprint on baseball wasn’t as strong as it is today. The world wasn’t as connected. The Blue Jays’ only Canadian-born player in those series was the seldom-used Rob Butler.
Today, their Canadian-born player isn’t just a benchwarmer; he’s one of the game’s biggest stars, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. He’s arguably the most well-known Vladimir in the world today, not named Putin.
Ohtani, Sanders, and the Global Game
Speaking of the biggest stars, the one who shines brightest is Shohei Ohtani, a modern-day Babe Ruth, playing for the Los Angeles Dodgers. Not only does Ohtani represent Japan, but the Dodgers’ roster is a true melting pot with players from Korea, Latin America, and the Caribbean. The international footprint now stretches across continents.
And here’s where things get even more interesting. In 1992, the Blue Jays competed against the Atlanta Braves, who featured none other than Mr. Versatility, Deion Sanders, a two-sport superstar. Sanders was an NFL player and a Major League Baseball player. In fact, during that postseason, Sanders suited up for an NFL game with the Falcons in Miami by day, and a playoff game in Pittsburgh with the Braves by night. While he didn’t play in the baseball game, he’s still the only athlete to come close to competing in two professional sports on the same day.
Dodgers superstar, Shohei Ohtani, is enough of a different kind of versatile athlete to make our nineties nostalgia for Sanders melt away. Ohtani excels as both a pitcher and a hitter, a rare feat in baseball. His level of versatility and the global scope of his game takes him far beyond the national level of Sanders’ career. While Sanders’ feats were celebrated at a national level, Ohtani’s talents transcend borders. His is a truly international phenomenon.
The game has gone global in a way that would’ve been unimaginable back in the early ‘90s. In 1993, the Blue Jays defeated the Chicago White Sox to advance to the World Series, where they went on to face the Philadelphia Phillies. The White Sox deserve a mention because, at the time, wearing their baseball cap was en vogue. Many people who weren’t even baseball fans sported the Sox cap with its iconic cursive “Sox” logo, simply to make a fashion statement.
Today, we see that same phenomenon on a global scale but this time, it’s for the Los Angeles Dodgers. Take China, a country of 1.4 billion people, for example. Be it jackets, sweatshirts, caps, or other apparel, the “LA” initials can be seen anywhere, from megacities like Guangzhou and Beijing to smaller cities you may have never heard of, like Weifang (aka Kite City). Much like the White Sox cap in the early ’90s, it’s a fashion statement first and foremost. As Daft Punk put it later that decade, baseball these days is truly, “Around the world, around the world.”
Language Fits (Finally)
So, here we are. With language imprecision running rampant these days, I’m glad I didn’t have to bend the meaning of “World Series” to make this year’s match-up the true “first.” But I had my strategy ready. Had the Seattle Mariners won, I would’ve just picked two international cities far apart enough to span the entire globe. I’d give them names worthy of their distance, and superimpose those names on everything I encountered about the World Series. And, as they say in baseball, let’s play ball.
But now, I don’t have to do that. For once, the language fits. The World Series is truly global. So, let’s play ball!