Baseball Labor Migration: Transformation of Border Crossings of Athletes in Global Diffusion of Baseball

As the result of globalization of a sport, the border crossings of athlete are increasing explosively today.

This study proves that the border crossings of athletes have accomplished the qualitative change from the example of global diffusion of baseball, which has evolved as a professional sport connected with capital. 

The global diffusion of baseball can be positioned on the context of forming a global marketing and scouting network of professional baseball whose summit is the Major League Baseball as North American top league.

 This network had subsumed Central America-Caribbean region by 1950s and East Asia after 1990’s, and has been expanding to the ‘Baseball Barren”, Europe, Middle East, Africa and South American Continent, after 2000s. As a result, new competition terrains, where playing level had been dropped, have emerged in some of the ‘Baseball Barren’, and new types of border crossings of athletes can be seen there.

In the past sport labor migration studies, it have been thought that economic reasons, like salary or bonus, are main factor for the athletes who cross borders, however, not a few athletes are going abroad for non-economic and mental reasons, such as self-actualization these days. These can be seen as a new phenomenon as the conclusion of globalization of sports. In this situation, border crossings of athletes can be regarded as not parts of ‘labor’, but parts of ‘consume’.  

From this analysis, the word of ‘Sport Labor Migration’ is becoming no longer appropriate to represent the border crossings of athletes.