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August 29, 2007

The Big Picture

Free Trade Amateurs

by David Pinto

The completion of the Little League World Series served to remind me of the growth in international baseball. There's reason to think about that, now more than ever now that 28 percent of baseball players in 2006 were born outside of the United States, the highest percentage of all time. With the introduction of the World Baseball Classic, Major League Baseball now actively promotes the game around the world. The hoped-for growth in the popularity of the game promises to expand the talent available to teams, which should make the game even stronger.

The growth of foreign born ballplayers holds an important lesson for MLB, however. The following graphs shows the percent of players born outside the United States from the inception of the modern two-league system in 1901:

I find this chart fascinating. For the first forty years of the twentieth century, the percentage of foreign born players stayed low, reaching just 0.8 percent in 1930. It rose again during World War II, as native-born players became scarce. The end of hostilities briefly brought the percentage down again, but after 1948 international players entered the game quickly, rising to 11 percent by 1967.

Then the growth stopped, and the percentage of foreign born players stayed constant for two decades. In 1987, however, the number of international players takes off again and the growth shows little signs of abating. What are the underlying causes of these periods of stagnation and growth?